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University  of  California  •  Berkeley 


Regional  Oral  History  Office  University  of  California 

The  Bancroft  Library  Berkeley,  California 


California  Horticulture  Oral  History  Series 


Wayne  Roderick 

CALIFORNIA  NATIVE  PLANTSMAN: 
UC  BERKELEY  BOTANICAL  GARDEN,  TILDEN  BOTANIC  GARDEN 


With  an  Introduction  by 
Walter  Knight 


Interviews  Conducted  by 

Suzanne  B.  Riess 

in  1990 


Copyright  (T)  1991  by  The  Regents  of  the  University  of  California 


Since  1954  the  Regional  Oral  History  Office  has  been  interviewing  leading 
participants  in  or  well -placed  witnesses  to  major  events  in  the  development  of 
Northern  California,  the  West,  and  the  Nation.  Oral  history  is  a  modern  research 
technique  involving  an  interviewee  and  an  informed  interviewer  in  spontaneous 
conversation.  The  taped  record  is  transcribed,  lightly  edited  for  continuity 
and  clarity,  and  reviewed  by  the  interviewee.  The  resulting  manuscript  is  typed 
in  final  form,  indexed,  bound  with  photographs  and  illustrative  materials,  and 
placed  in  The  Bancroft  Library  at  the  University  of  California,  Berkeley,  and 
other  research  collections  for  scholarly  use.  Because  it  is  primary  material, 
oral  history  is  not  intended  to  present  the  final,  verified,  or  complete 
narrative  of  events.  It  is  a  spoken  account,  offered  by  the  interviewee  in 
response  to  questioning,  and  as  such  it  is  reflective,  partisan,  deeply  involved, 
and  irreplaceable. 


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All  uses  of  this  manuscript  are  covered  by  a  legal  agreement 
between  The  Regents  of  the  University  of  California  and  Wayne 
Roderick  dated  June  13,  1990.  The  manuscript  is  thereby  made 
available  for  research  purposes.  All  literary  rights  in  the 
manuscript,  including  the  right  to  publish,  are  reserved  to  The 
Bancroft  Library  of  the  University  of  California,  Berkeley.  No  part 
of  the  manuscript  may  be  quoted  for  publication  without  the  written 
permission  of  the  Director  of  The  Bancroft  Library  of  the  University 
of  California,  Berkeley. 

Requests  for  permission  to  quote  for  publication  should  be 
addressed  to  the  Regional  Oral  History  Office,  486  Library, 
University  of  California,  Berkeley  94720,  and  should  include 
identification  of  the  specific  passages  to  be  quoted,  anticipated 
use  of  the  passages,  and  identification  of  the  user.  The  legal 
agreement  with  Wayne  Roderick  requires  that  he  be  notified  of  the 
request  and  allowed  thirty  days  in  which  to  respond. 

It  is  recommended  that  this  oral  history  be  cited  as  follows: 


Wayne  Roderick,  "California  Native 
Plantsman:  UC  Berkeley  Botanical  Garden, 
Tilden  Botanic  Garden,"  an  oral  history 
conducted  in  1990  by  Suzanne  B.  Riess, 
Regional  Oral  History  Office,  The  Bancroft 
Library,  University  of  California, 
Berkeley,  1991. 


Copy  no.   JL 


Wayne  Roderick,  1991 


Photographed  in  U.C,  Botanical  Garden 

by  Suzanne  B.  Riess 


Cataloging  Information 
RODERICK,  Wayne  (b.  1920) 


Plantsman 


California  Native  Plantsman:  UC  Botanical  Garden.  Tilden  Botanic  Garden.  1991, 
ix,  166  pp. 

Petaluma  CA  childhood:  chicken  ranching,  mother's  garden,  Roderick  family 
nursery,  1945-1959;  UC  Berkeley  Botanical  Garden,  California  native  area, 
1960-1976:  management  and  staff,  collecting  botanical  material  for  class  use, 
developing  the  garden;  Tilden  Park  Botanic  Garden,  1976-1982:  supporters, 
California  Native  Plant  Society,  Jim  Roof,  objectives  of  garden;  comments  on 
rare  and  endangered  species  inventory,  Native  Plant  Study  Group,  plant 
collecting  policies,  botanists  and  taxonomists,  English  horticulturists. 
Appended  articles  by  Roderick. 

Introduction  by  Walter  Knight,  Field  Associate,  California  Academy  of  Sciences 
Botany  Department. 

Interviewed  1990  by  Suzanne  B.  Riess  for  the  California  Horticulture  Oral 
History  Series.   The  Regional  Oral  History  Office,  The  Bancroft  Library, 
University  of  California,  Berkeley. 


Donors  to  the  Wayne  Roderick  Oral  History  Project 


The  Bancroft  Library,  on  behalf  of  future  researchers,  wishes  to 
thank  the  following  persons  whose  contributions  made  possible  this 
oral  history  project. 


David  and  Evelyne  Lennette 

American  Rock  Garden  Society,  Western  Chapter 

Stanley  Smith  Horticultural  Trust 

Ann  Witter  Gillette 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS --Wayne  Roderick 

INTRODUCTION  by  Walter  Knight  i 

INTERVIEW  HISTORY  v 

BIOGRAPHICAL  INFORMATION  viii 

I   FAMILY  AND  EARLY  YEARS,  1920-1945  1 

Family  Origins  1 

A  Petaluma  Chicken  Ranch  in  the  1930s  3 

A  "Plant  Happy"  Family  6 

Japanese  Nurseries  and  the  War  9 

From  Weeds  to  Orchids  11 

The  Oakland  Spring  Garden  Show  13 

Early  Attempts  at  Rock  Gardens ,  Native  Gardens  14 

Mother's  Blue  Ribbon  Garden  in  Petaluma  15 

War  Experience,  College  Experience  19 

Learning  Plants  22 

II  NURSERY  BUSINESS,  1945-1959  24 

Hard  Work:  Propagating,  Dealing  with  Customers,  Staying  Ahead  24 

Fellow  Nurserymen:  Victor  Reiter,  Toichi  Domoto                     26 

Protecting  Stock,  in  the  Nursery  and  in  the  Wild  28 

Sunset  Western  Garden  Book- -An  Opinion  31 

Working  with  Landscape  Architects  32 

Garden  Snobs ,  and  the  Garden  Conservancy  34 

III  UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  BOTANICAL  GARDEN,  1960-1976  39 

Job  Possibilities  for  Roderick,  1960  39 

"Continuing  Education"  40 

Employees  and  Managers  at  the  Garden  41 

Weeding,  and  Collecting  Class  Material  45 

"Desk  Work"  and  the  Dawn  Redwood  Fuss  48 

California  Native  Area  50 

Triumphing  over  the  Soil  51 

Plant  Islands,  Soil  Tests  54 

A  Vernal  Pool  and  A  Pygmy  Forest  55 

Native  Garden,  Strybing  Arboretum  58 

Western  Hills  Nursery,  Occidental,  California                 59 

Cross-State  Collecting  Trips  61 

Programs:  Indian  Uses,  and  Explorers  of  the  West  62 

Roses  and  Orchids,  and  the  Public  64 

More  on  Employees  and  Managers  at  the  Garden  65 

Sixties^  Disruptions  at  the  Garden  66 

Upgrading  Field  Data  68 

Horticultural  Characters  69 

Flood  and  Frost  at  the  Garden  71 

Mather  Redwood  Grove  73 

"Retirement"  74 


IV  NATIVE  PLANTS  77 

Tilden  Park  Botanic  Garden,  William  Penn  Mott  and  Friends  77 
Ledyard  Stebbins,  and  Leadership  of  California  Native  Plant 

Society  79 

Inventory  of  Rare  and  Endangered  Plants  in  California  83 

Propagating  the  Rare  and  Endangered  85 

Inventory  of  California  Natural  Areas  87 

Collecting  on  Public  Lands  89 

Horticultural  Value  of  Native  Plants  91 

Saving  Natural  Areas  93 

Carl  Purdy,  Theodore  Payne,  and  Lester  Rowntree  96 

Taxonomists  98 

V  TILDEN  PARK  BOTANIC  GARDEN,  1976-1982  100 

Jim  Roof  100 

Records  and  Numbering  System  104 

Mapping,  Thinning  (Ted  Kipping) ,  Digging  105 

Staff  and  the  Public  108 

The  Bad  with  the  Good  109 

Meeting  Fellow  Botanic  Gardeners  110 

Regions  and  Zones  112 

VI  THE  BIG  HORTICULTURAL  PICTURE:  INTERNATIONAL  CONNECTIONS  114 

Wildf lowers ,  Flora,  Keys,  Terminology  114 

Styles  of  Writing  and  Speaking  About  Horticulture  117 

Know-How  119 

England:   E.  B.  Anderson,  Chris  Brickell,  Alice  Moore  120 

Collecting  and  Sharing  Bulbs  123 

Garden  Climates  and  Colors  126 

Turkey  127 

Coming  Through  Customs  129 

Seed  Exchange  130 

Awards  132 

Native  Plant  Study  Group:  Publication  Plans  133 

"Doing  the  Flowers"  138 

Compost  140 

TAPE  GUIDE  142 

APPENDICES  143 

A.  "Propagation  of  Native  Plants  with  Bulbs,  Tubers,  Corms,  144 
Rhizomes,  and  Rootstocks,"  by  Wayne  Roderick  and  W.  Richard 

Hildreth,  Fremontia.  Journal  of  the  California  Native  Plant 
Society,  Volume  3,  April  1975. 

B.  "The  1989  SPCNI  Spring  Expedition,"  Spring  1989  issue  of  154 
the  Society  of  Pacific  Coast  Native  Iris  Almanac .  pp.  7-10. 

C.  "Wildflower  Haunts  of  California,"  by  Wayne  Roderick,  158 
Bulletin  of  the  American  Rock  Garden  Society.  Vol.  48  (1) 

Winter  1990,  pp.  3-13. 

INDEX  164 


INTRODUCTION --by  Walter  Knight 


Wayne  Roderick  and  I  were  both  born  in  Petaluma,  and  we  lived  only  a 
half  mile  apart,  but  since  I  am  seven  years  older  our  paths  never  crossed 
during  school  years. 

After  World  War  II  Wayne  and  his  parents  conducted  a  nursery 
business  and  my  wife  and  I  had  an  interior  decorating  shop.   Both  of  our 
enterprises  were  on  the  property  where  we  were  born. 

In  the  late  1950s  and  early  1960s  my  wife,  Irja,  would  go  to  the 
Roderick  Nursery  to  buy  plants  to  enhance  the  area  about  the  garden.   But 
it  was  not  until  about  1961  that  I  met  Wayne  for  the  first  time.   It  was 
one  Saturday  morning  when  he  came  to  our  shop  to  buy  some  window  shades 
for  a  house  he  had  recently  purchased  in  Berkeley.   He  had  given  up  his 
nursery  business  and  begun  employment  with  the  University  of  California 
at  their  Berkeley  botanical  garden  in  the  native  Calif ornian  plant  area. 

At  the  time  I  was  much  interested  in  photography  and  seemed  to  be 
attracted  to  taking  pictures  of  flowers  although  I  did  not  know  one  plant 
from  the  other.   During  our  conversation  while  preparing  the  window 
shades,  we  both  became  aware  that  we  had  something  in  common—plants. 
The  rest  of  the  day  was  spent  in  looking  over  my  slides.   It  resulted 
that  I  had  taken  many  pictures  of  native  material.   Wayne  said  that  most 
of  his  botanical  experience  had  been  with  ornamentals  and  that  even 
though  he  had  been  assigned  to  the  university's  native  area,  he  could 
learn  a  lot  more  about  the  botany  of  California. 

We  agreed  that  if  he  would  come  to  Petaluma  after  work  on  Fridays, 
we  could  go  on  field  trips  over  the  weekend  and  further  our  knowledge  of 
the  local  flora.   So  each  Saturday  morning  Wayne  and  his  mother  would 
accompany  Irja  and  me  to  some  interesting  place  where  we  could  photograph 
and  collect  plants.   When  Wayne  would  return  the  next  Friday,  the  four  of 
us  would  get  together  and  study  the  pictures  from  the  previous  weekend. 
With  the  help  of  literature  we  would  identify  the  plants  as  they  appeared 
on  the  screen.   This  routine  continued  for  a  couple  of  years  until  we  all 
became  more  comfortable  with  our  ability  to  identify  and  grow  the  plants 
that  we  had  studied. 

Wayne  continued  to  work  at  the  University  of  California  botanical 
garden  in  Berkeley  until  1976.   He  became  director  of  the  Regional  Parks 
Botanic  Garden  in  Berkeley  where  he  remained  until  his  retirement. 


ii 


All  during  the  time  he  worked  at  Berkeley,  it  was  apparent  to  all  of 
his  friends  that  he  had  a  special  devotion  to  his  mother.   Each  weekend 
he  would  go  to  Petaluma  to  assist  her  with  shopping  and  some  of  the 
heavier  chores  in  her  garden. 

Paralleling  this  time,  in  1965  I  went  to  work  as  a  gardener  for  the 
same  Regional  Parks  Botanic  Garden  and  soon  was  working  as  supervisor. 
In  1971  I  became  supervisor  of  several  developing  parks  within  the  East 
Bay  Regional  Parks  District.   In  1979  I  became  a  park  administrator 
working  out  of  the  main  office.   Tilden  Park  and  the  Regional  Parks 
Botanic  Garden  were  placed  in  my  jurisdiction. 

The  best  part  of  this  development  was  that  Wayne  and  I  had  the 
opportunity  of  being  together  again.   I  soon  learned  that  he  had  enhanced 
the  management  of  the  botanic  garden  considerably  since  I  had  left  it  in 
1971.   He  had  started  a  winter  lecture  series  for  the  visitors'  center. 
Highly  qualified  speakers  attracted  large  audiences  to  the  little 
auditorium  to  hear  of  the  latest  horticultural  methods  or  see  a  slide 
show  of  interesting  field  trips. 

He  also  enhanced  the  garden  by  installing  a  freshwater  pond  with 
many  plants  found  within  the  California  botanical  province.   The  water 
gradually  seeped  out  of  the  first  pond  constructed,  so  Wayne  found  a 
garden  patron  who  "bankrolled"  a  plastic  liner  which  was  placed  at  the 
bed  of  the  pond  and  the  problem  was  solved. 

Also,  he  inspired  a  crew  of  volunteers  to  do  watering  in  the  garden 
and  to  remove  the  sporadic  seedlings.   These  seedlings  were  carefully 
canned  and  labelled  and  later  sold  at  what  turned  out  to  be  an  annual 
spring  plant  sale.   The  proceeds  of  the  sale  were  put  into  a  trust  fund 
used  for  garden  development.   Ultimately,  some  of  the  good  things  which 
resulted  were  a  chain  link  fence  around  an  addition  to  the  garden,  a  495 
page  garden  guide,  which  I  had  the  good  fortune  to  compile,  and  paved 
paths  for  easy  access. 

Thus  many  good  things  happened  to  considerably  enhance  the  quality 
of  the  garden,  largely  because  of  Wayne's  ability  to  generate  friendships 
with  garden  visitors  and  to  bring  his  old  friends  to  assist  in  garden 
maintenance  and  development.   For  example,  Ted  Kipping,  a  tree  shaper, 
brought  his  crew  to  do  tree  surgery  and  eliminated  growth  detrimental  to 
some  of  the  trees.   This  would  have  drained  the  botanic  garden  budget 
considerably  if  an  "outsider"  had  been  hired  to  take  care  of  this. 

Also,  the  Regional  Parks  Botanical  Garden  became  a  showcase  for  lily 
displays  as  well  as  other  small  plants  which  were  never  featured  in  the 
garden  before  Wayne's  time.   He  took  a  special  liking  to  bulb  plants  and 
became  an  expert  in  their  cultivation. 


Ill 


Our  contact  with  each  other  during  Wayne's  last  couple  of  years  at 
the  garden  was  fortunate  as  he  never  liked  to  do  anything  with  record 
keeping  or  paper  work.   He  always  delegated  those  duties,  so  I  was  happy 
to  help  him  with  his  office  work  as  I  knew  that  would  enable  him  to  spend 
more  time  on  projects  within  his  area  of  expertise.   Also,  as  I  was  handy 
with  carpentry,  I  built  some  shelves  and  cabinets  to  make  his  office 
facility  better. 

I  always  had  the  feeling  that  I  was  the  culprit  who  forced  Wayne's 
retirement  from  the  garden  because  when  I  left  in  1981,  Wayne  said,  "I'll 
be  damned  if  I'm  going  to  do  any  of  that  paper  work,  so  I'm  quitting 
too !  " 

During  the  time  of  his  association  with  nurseries,  botanic  gardens, 
and  the  California  Horticultural  Society,  he  developed  a  skill  in 
formulation,  care,  and  maintenance  of  rock  gardens.   He  was  asked  to 
lecture  on  the  subject  in  Canada  and  England.   He  travelled  to  Spain, 
Turkey,  Russia,  and  Mexico  in  his  pursuit  of  horticultural  knowledge.   He 
always  collected  seed  whenever  he  could  and  has  conducted  a  seed  exchange 
program  for  many  years . 

During  his  foreign  travel  he  has  met  many  world- renowned 

horticulturists  and  maintained  contact  with  them.   His  home  in  Orinda  has 
been  open  constantly  to  guests  interested  in  plants,  and  he  has  taken 
them  on  field  trips  to  all  his  favorite  collecting  sites. 

Over  the  years  I  have  been  fortunate  in  becoming  acquainted  with 
scores  of  botanists  and  horticulturists  interested  in  the  California 
flora.   For  the  most  part,  these  individuals  are  never  bored  during  their 
working  career  or  in  their  retirement.   Their  vocation  is  their  hobby. 
Many  of  them  never  take  the  time  to  watch  television  as  they  have  almost 
total  dedication  to  their  prime  activity.   Wayne  goes  even  beyond  this  as 
I  have  never  known  any  of  his  waking  moments  that  he  is  not  engaged  in  a 
horticultural  or  botanical  pursuit. 

In  retirement,  Wayne  probably  makes  as  much  of  a  contribution  to  the 
botanic  garden  as  he  did  when  he  was  director,  as  he  volunteers  so  much 
of  his  time  to  it. 

As  a  side  note,  Martha,  Wayne's  mother,  moved  from  the  nursery 
location  in  the  country  to  Petaluma  where  she  grew  a  collection  of  plants 
that  was  the  envy  of  gardeners  throughout  the  country.   In  fact  in  the 
late  1970s  she  won  an  award  for  having  the  best  garden  in  the  area.   We 
took  our  eight-year-old  granddaughter,  Tiffany,  to  visit  Martha's  garden 
and  even  at  that  young  age,  she  said,  "Mrs.  Roderick  has  the  most 
beautiful  garden  in  the  world." 


IV 


Wayne's  skill  is  not  only  horticulture  but  in  developing 
friendships.   That  is  why  he  will  be  remembered. 

f 

Walter  Knight 

Field  Associate,  California  Academy  of 

Sciences,  Botany  Department,  San 

Francisco 

February  22,  1991 
Petaluma,  California 


INTERVIEW  HISTORY 


Wayne  Roderick's  entire  life  has  been  dedicated  to  sharing  his 
knowledge  of  flowering  plants  and  flowering  places.   The  formal  sharing, 
and  educating,  has  taken  the  form  of  running  a  nursery  in  Petaluma, 
California,  and  two  native  plant  botanic  gardens  in  Berkeley.   Informally 
everyone  knows  Wayne  Roderick  through  his  participation  in  horticultural 
societies  and  garden  groups.   He  is  retired  now,  but  he  is  busy  all  over 
the  horticultural  map.   He  gives  classes  in  flower  arranging,  he  opens 
his  house  and  garden  annually  to,  among  others,  the  members  of  the 
American  Rock  Garden  Society,  Western  Chapter,  and  to  his  many 
horticulturist  friends,  from  Oregon  and  Nevada  and  abroad.  And  he  gets 
out  into  that  garden  every  day  and  weeds  and  loves  it! 

All  such  formal  and  informal  reasons,  as  well  as  admiration  for 
Wayne  Roderick's  contribution  to  knowledge  of  California  native  plants, 
inspired  David  and  Evelyne  Lennette,  originators  and  sponsors  of  the 
California  Horticulture  Oral  History  series,  to  recommend  Mr.  Roderick  to 
the  Regional  Oral  History  Office  as  an  interviewee  in  the  series. 
Further  strong  endorsement  came  from  Dr.  Robert  Ornduff ,  director  of  UC 
Berkeley's  Botanical  Garden,  and  from  George  Waters,  editor  of  Pacific 
Horticulture . 

My  first  introduction  to  Wayne  Roderick  came  on  March  4,  1990,  a 
drizzly  Sunday  in  spring.   It  was  Open  House  at  166  Canon  Drive  in  Orinda 
for  members  of  the  American  Rock  Garden  Society,  Western  Chapter,  and  it 
was  prime  time  to  see  rock  garden  bulbous  plants  in  situ,  some  in  bloom. 
Wayne --it  was  immediately  clear  that  I  could  address  him  informally- -had 
already  heard  about  the  Regional  Oral  History  Office  of  The  Bancroft 
Library  from  Adele  and  Lewis  Lawyer,  friends  from  the  rock  garden  and 
iris  worlds  and  interviewees  in  the  horticulture  series,  and  that  day  he 
said  he  was  agreeable  to  the  idea  of  tape-recording  his  history. 

Interviewing  began  on  April  30,  1990,  after  Wayne's  trip  to  England 
and  Turkey.  We  met  in  his  living  room  for  four  two-hour  sessions  that 
were  concluded  on  June  6th.   The  interviews  were  designed  to  be  a 
chronological  account,  deriving  from  Wayne  Roderick's  vita,  where  he 
states  he  was  born  in  the  same  home  where  his  father  was  born,  in 
Petaluma,  California  and  into  a  "plant-happy  family."   "I  had  my  first 
plot  of  ground  before  I  was  five  years  old... first  rock  garden  by  age 
sixteen. " 


vi 


Wayne  and  his  father  Frank  Roderick  opened  a  nursery  in  Petaluma  in 
1945.   In  1959,  after  the  death  of  his  father,  Wayne  closed  the  nursery 
and  came  down  to  Berkeley  to  take  a  job  at  UC  Berkeley's  Botanical 
Garden.   He  was  head  of  the  California  section  of  the  garden,  and 
lecturer  there,  from  1960  to  1976.   He  went  on  to  be  director  of  the  East 
Bay  Regional  Parks  Botanic  Garden  from  1976-1983,  and  retired  in  1983. 

In  his  vita  Wayne  Roderick  describes  his  specialty  as  California 
native  bulbs  and  rock  garden  plants,  as  well  as  bulbs  from  other  lands. 
In  1966  he  received  an  award  from  the  California  Horticultural  Society 
for  his  contribution  to  their  work.   The  award  particularly  noted  Wayne's 
devotion  to  the  horticultural  society's  seed  exchange  scheme: 

"He  collects  the  seeds,  prepares  the  lists  and  attends  to  the 
dispatch.   For  almost  every  one  of  the  monthly  meetings  he 
brings  plant  material  and  assists  in  the  organization  of  the 
discussion  sessions...  He  is  frequently  to  be  encountered 
running  errands  of  mercy  for  his  friends  (which  means 
everyone).   Given... the  opportunity  of  a  foreign  vacation  he 
plunges  deeply  on  a  detailed  reconnaissance  of  famous  and 
nearly- famous  British  Gardens,  together  with  a  talk  to  the 
Royal  Horticultural  Society. . .Let  him  get  into  the  Sierra  or 
the  North  Coast  Ranges  or  way  out  into  the  desert. . .he  will 
return  with  booty  and  information. . ." 

The  reward  was  given  for  "selfless  service." 

The  thinking  behind  the  oral  history  interviews  was  to  allow  the 
personal  qualities,  train  of  thought  and  associations,  working  manner  and 
style  of  this  extraordinary  horticulturist  to  bear  witness  to  itself. 
Wayne  is  a  "character"  by  his  own  and  his  friends'  acknowledgment.   He  is 
not  without  temperament,  and  certainly  not  without  opinions,  reliably  and 
consistently  himself.   He  was  completely  open  to  the  oral  history 
interview  process.   Spoken  history  was  a  perfect  medium  for  him. 
Spontaneous,  talkative,  and  un-self -conscious ,  he  needed  no  encouragement 
to  share  his  thoughts  on  the  subjects  we  were  documenting  and  the  people 
we  wanted  to  know  more  about.   He  was  candid  in  his  choice  of  words. 

Wayne  Roderick  is  also  candid  in  writing.   His  recent  article  on 
"Wildflower  Haunts  of  California"  in  the  Bulletin  of  the  American  Rock 
Garden  Society  [appended]  echoes  his  spoken  language.   He  promises  the 
reader  he  will  "bring  the  wrath  of  California  down  on  your  head  for 
digging  any  plant!   But  California  will  bless  you  for  taking  a  little 
seed...   Some  of  these  areas  I  have  personally  fought  to  have  set  aside, 
and  I  will  personally  hate  you,  too,  if  you  use  this  information  to 
exploit  them  by  digging  plants."   In  that  article,  and  with  that  caveat, 
he  takes  the  reader  on  a  trip  from  Oregon  in  the  north,  west  to  Eureka, 
east  to  Bristlecone  Pines  Preserve,  and  south  to  Mount  Pinos,  to  find 


Vll 


those  wildf lower  haunts.   Lucky  the  Bulletin  reader  who  can  take  off  and 
go.   "I  have  left  out  so  many  good  places  that  some  people  will  think 


there  is  something  wrong  with  me... 
fashion. 


he  concludes,  in  characteristic 


Wayne  Roderick's  knowledge  of  the  propagation  of  native  plants  with 
bulbs ,  tubers ,  corms ,  rhizomes ,  and  rootstocks  is  probably  close  to 
total.   He  has  published  on  the  subject  [appended].   His  contribution  to 
the  Inventory  of  California  Natural  Areas  and  the  Inventory  of  Rare  and 
Endangered  Plants  in  California,  and  his  work,  soon  to  be  published,  on 
the  horticultural  value  of  native  plants,  is  a  rare  combination  of  the 
scholarly  and  voluntary,  born  of  field  experience.   Designated  by  one  of 
his  editors,  "Ambassador  of  western  petaloid  monocots,"  he  is  also  the 
guy  in  the  garden  next  door. 

Our  inclusion  of  Wayne  Roderick  in  this  series  of  interviews  serves 
in  part  to  help  define  the  series.   To  read  about  his  relatively  un- 
academic  approach  to  horticulture,  and  to  realize  his  abundant  native 
abilities,  will  be  instructive  to  others  in  this  field  which  has  so  much 
room  in  it,  and  so  much  to  offer  to  everyone,  in  theory  from  the  five- 
year  old  that  Wayne  was,  to  the  re-entry  gardener  in  pursuit  of  what  has 
become  a  most  popular  and  satisfying,  if  not  trendy  interest,  to  plant 
pathologists ,  botanists,  photographers- -all  manner  of  amateurs  and 
professionals . 

As  I  have  indicated,  Wayne  was  an  open  and  interested  interviewee, 
and  his  editing  of  the  interview  was  swift  and  efficient.   His  choice  of 
Walter  Knight  to  introduce  the  interview  was  inspired.   We  asked  Adele 
and  Lewis  Lawyer  to  proof-read  the  oral  history,  and  it  is  their  captions 
in  colloquial  Latin  that  we  have  included  in  illustrating  young  Wayne. 

Wayne  Roderick's  oral  history  is  the  third  volume  completed  in  the 
California  Horticulture  Oral  History  series.   The  series  is  a  part  of  the 
larger  group  of  interviews  conducted  by  the  Regional  Oral  History  Office 
of  The  Bancroft  Library  of  the  University  of  California,  Berkeley  on 
horticulture,  botany,  and  landscape  architecture.   The  oral  history 
office  is  headed  by  Willa  K.  Baum  and  is  under  the  administrative 
supervision  of  the  director  of  The  Bancroft  Library. 


Suzanne  B.  Riess,  Senior  Editor 


Regional  Oral  History  Office 
Berkeley  California 
May  25,  1991 


Roderick 

Regional  Oral  History  Office 
Room  486  The  Bancroft  Library 


Vlll 


University  of  California 
Berkeley,  California  94720 


BIOGRAPHICAL  INFORMATION 
(Please  write  clearly.   Use  black  ink.) 

Your  full  name    ll/dln^  l/£&A-6  n 


Date  of  birth   A*tt   >L  ltJU> 


Father's   full  name f  it,Altfr S_ 

Occupation 


Mother's   full  name 

_>b 

Occupation, 


Your  spouse   ~— 


Your  children 


Birthplace 


Birthplace 


Birthplace 


Where  did  you  grow  up? 
Present  community 
Education  _  //i  ^  A  SCn 


K  d 


Occupat  ion  (  s  ) 


r  lite  4^    n  a<tg 


Areas  of  expertise 


Other  interests  or  activities 


^^o^/y^    L//3^^  .  ,  Qf  //«-C/  ~><, 


Organizations   in  which  you  are  active      (^  f  ^  f-    rj<JH*>   5flg.,  , 


Wayne  Roderick 
166  Canon  Dr, 
Orinda.,  CA  94563 

Born  in  the  same  home  where  father  was  born,  in  Petaluma  Calif,  and  into 
a  plant  happy  family. 

Had  first  plot  of  ground  before  I  was  5  yrs.  old. 
Was  into  Orchids  as  well  as  succulents  by  age  14. 
First  rock  garden  by  age  16. 

Had  my  own  strain  of  asters,  Af.  marigolds,  and  polyanthus  pnLnroses 
by  age  18. 

We  started  a  nursery  in  1945  and  closed  out  in  1959  after  the  death  of 
ray  father. 

Went  to  work  at  Univ.  of  Calif.,  Berkeley,  Bot.  Garden  as  head  of  the 
Calif,  section  and  lecturer.  1960-1976 

Director  of  Regional  Parks  Bot.  Garden  from  1976-1983 
Retired  in  1983.  (as  I  say  I  am  now  retarded) 


I  have  specialized  in  our  Calif,  native  bulbs  and  rock  garden  pants  as 
well  as  bulbs  from  other  lands.  I  have  introduced  several  plants 
into  horticulture.  I  have  two  plants  named  in  my  honor.  I  have 
done  much  in  conservation  for  seme  the  most  interesting  botanical 
areas  that  I  made  known. 

I  have  done  extensive  traveling  studying  plants  from  the  artic  to  the 
topics:  not  less  than  12  times  to  Europe;  I  have  been  in  Central 
Asia,  China,  S.  Africa  to  mention  a  few. 

I  am  an  honorary  member  of  Herb  Soc.  of  America. 

Life  member  Alpine  Garden  Soc.  (England),  Calif.  Horticulture  Soc., 
and  Calif.  Native  Plant  Soc.  (and  a  charter  member). 
Meriber  of  Amer.  Rock  Garden  Soc,,  Pacific  Hort.  Foundation,  and 
a  Fellow  of  the  Royal  Hort.  Soc. 

Awecrds: 

Man  of  the  Year  Univ.  of  Calif.,  Berkeley.  Cal974 

11        "      Calif.  Garden  Clubs,   Inc.     1977 
LePiniec  Award  Amer.  Rock  Garden  Soc.     Ca.   1980 
Rixford        "      Calif,  Hort.  Soc,     Ca.   1965 
Annual          "          "  "        "     1983 


Riess : 
Roderick: 


I   FAMILY  AND  EARLY  YEARS,  1920-1945 
[Interview  1:   April  30,  1990 ]//#1 

Family  Origins 

Tell  me  about  your  beginnings. 

The  first  thing  I  can  say,  I  was  born  in  the  same  house  that  my 
father  was  born  in,  in  Petaluma. 


Riess:     How  did  your  parents  get  to  Petaluma? 

Roderick:   My  father's  father  came  in  the  Gold  Rush.   He  was  a  Portuguese, 
and  he  was  from  the  Azores,  born  and  raised  there.   The  name 
then,  I  think,  was  Joseph  Rodriguez  e  Catano ,  changed  to 
Roderick  when  he  became  a  citizen  in  Tuolumne  County  in  the  late 
1860s.   My  father's  mother's  name  was  Flora.   I  remember  on  the 
ranch  they  had  an  old  building  where  a  lot  of  things  were 
stored.   Before  it  was  burnt,  and  I  was  just  a  small  kid,  I 
found  this  trunk  with  a  lot  of  his  papers.   I  saw  his 
citizenship  papers,  and  he  had  his  citizenship  papers  when 
Tuolumne  City  was  still  the  county  seat,  before  it  went  to 
Sonora. 

Somewhere  around  1868,  1869,  somewhere  around  there,  as 
near  as  I  know,  he  moved  to  Petaluma.   At  that  time  Petaluma  was 
to  be  just  a  little  village,  head  of  water  transportation.   The 
great  city  was  going  to  be  Bloomfield.   The  population  of 
Bloomfield  is  still  about  twenty.  He  bought  whole  big  blocks 
out  there,  too.   He  had  the  stage  between  Petaluma,  the  head  of 
the  water  transportation,  out  to  Bloomfield.   But  Petaluma  grew, 
and  he  bought  some  acreage  out  on  the  edge  of  town  and  finally 
settled  there. 


1This  symbol  (////)  indicates  that  a  tape  or  segment  of  a  tape  has  begun 
or  ended.   For  a  guide  to  the  tapes  see  page  142. 


Riess:     This  is  your  father's  father? 

Roderick:   Yes.   And  he  became  the  court  interpreter. 

Riess:     Interpreter?  For  the  Spanish- speaking  people? 

Roderick:   Spanish,  the  Italian,  French,  and  Portuguese.   And  something 
tells  me,  and  I  don't  know  yet  where  I  got  this  idea,  German. 
The  pictures  we  have,  he  always  wore  a  Homburg  hat,  always  had  a 
tie  on,  and  had  a  big  white  flowing  beard.   He  died  about  five 
years  before  I  was  born. 

My  father's  mother  died  shortly  after  he  was  born.   My 
father  [Frank  S.  Roderick]  was  number  twelve  in  the  family,  and 
the  older  girls  raised  him.   Again,  that's  all  the  information  I 
know  because  almost  all  of  those  died  before  I  was  born. 

Riess:     And  when  were  you  born? 

Roderick:   April  2,  1920.   As  they  always  said,  I  was  born  a  day  late.   My 
mother's  side  of  the  family,  we  have  records  back  to  the  1660s 
in  New  Jersey.   I  have  information  from  the  Revolutionary  War, 
where  this  one  ancestor  was  a  captain  in  the  Revolution  and  the 
first  governor  of  Kentucky,  and  lots  of  fantastic,  interesting 
information  from  there  on. 

Riess:     Why  did  the  family  come  to  California? 

Roderick:  My  grandmother  on  my  mother's  side  [Mary  F.  Conley]--her  husband 
[Christifer  Albush]  died,  and  she  remarried  [William  Davis] . 
She  had  heart  problems,  and  in  those  years,  you  went  from  a  high 
elevation  to  a  low  elevation.   My  grandmother  and  her  first 
husband  were  married  in  Kansas  and  moved  to  Colorado  and  bought 
a  property  way  out  at  the  edge  of  the  country.   They  had  a 
garrison  of  soldiers  to  keep  the  Indians  down.   Then  when  my 
grandmother  got  ill  they  moved  to  California  and  lived  two  or 
three  places  here.   I  can't  tell  you  any  more  than  that. 

She  had  leased  the  ranch  out  back  there,  and  finally  the 
family  of  relatives  who  were  back  there  wrote  saying  that  the 
tenants  had  made  such  a  horrible  mess  of  the  ranch,  they  better 
get  back.   So,  she  moved  her  seven  kids  into  the  tenant's  house 
on  her  property.   They  had  to  get  a  male  teacher  that  could  beat 
up  on  at  least  three  of  the  Jack  Derapsey  family,  because  it  was 
the  Jack  Dempsey  family  that  rented  ray  grandmother's  ranch,  or 
leased  it.   When  you  read  of  the  Dempseys  in  Colorado,  it  was  on 
my  grandmother's  ranch. 


Finally  she  got  rid  of  them.   She  sold  the  ranch  and  came 
back  to  California.   Again,  they  moved  around,  and  finally  they 
settled  up  in  Eureka.   My  father  got  in  a  fight  with  his  father 
and  moved  to  Eureka,  and  that's  where  my  mother  and  father  were 
married.   Then  they  moved,  and  about  that  time  my  grandfather 
had  a  stroke,  and  they  moved  back  to  Petaluma. 

Riess:     It  sounds  like  your  mother  comes  from  a  family  of  strong  women. 

Roderick:   Yes,  very  strong. 

Riess:     And  she  was  a  strong  woman  herself? 

Roderick:   Extremely  so.   Very  opinionated.   Extremely  so.   She  was 
absolutely  crazy  over  plants. 

Riess:     Are  you  a  first  child? 

Roderick:   No.   I  was  the  second  one.   My  sister's  a  little  older  than  I 
am- -two  and  a  half  years.   Her  name  is  Lavelle  Marie  Donovan. 


A  Petaluma  Chicken  Ranch  in  the  1930s 


Riess:     What  was  your  father's  business  when  he  came  back  down? 

Roderick:   They  had  chickens.   My  grandfather  had  one  of  the  first 

hatcheries  in  Petaluma.   I  can  remember  the  old  incubators  still 
stored  in  this  building  where  they  had  the  hatchery.   Why  they 
stopped,  I  have  no  idea. 

Riess:     There's  an  oral  history  in  our  office  with  the  Jewish  chicken 
raising  families  in  Petaluma.   Apparently,  there  was  a  large 
group . 

Roderick:   I  remember  when  they  came  in,  and  immediately  a  lot  of  the 

credit  was  stopped.   It  was  what  we  always  referred  to  as  the 
Russian  Jews.   Now,  there  were  other  ones.   There  was  a  Mrs. 
Hayes  who  lived  close  to  us,  and  we  absolutely- -we  didn't  care 
much  for  her  husband,  but  she  was  an  absolute  doll. 

Riess:     But  these  were  Russian  Jews?  That  you  do  remember. 
Roderick:   That's  what  we  referred  to  them  as. 

I  remember  when  my  father- -let' s  see,  that  was  about  1935 
or  so- -had  financial  troubles,  family  financial  troubles.   He 


was  semi- in  business  with  them.   It  came  to  around,  I  think  it 
was  thirty  thousand  all  total.   My  uncle  owed  thirty  thousand 
dollars  worth  of  checks,  and  there  was  no  money. 

My  mother  had  put  a  lot  of  checks  in  the  mail.   Well,  my 
father  hauled  chicken  manure  from  Petaluma  to  Salinas  and 
Watsonville  for  the  lettuce  fields  and  all  those  crops.   And  it 
was  big,  lots  of  money  in  that.   When  she  told  the  fellow  who 
owned  the  bank—he  was  a  family  friend- -she  said,  "This  is 
what's  happened."   He  said,  "We'll  cover  the  checks."   Never 
signed  one  paper.   All  those  checks  that  my  mother  had  mailed  to 
the  farmers  were  all  covered.   My  mother  was  able  to  get  enough 
money  to  cover  all  of  them,  and  they  came  back.   I  think  there 
was  something  like  a  fifteen  cent  charge  for  doing  all  that. 
Very  shortly  after  that,  all  of  a  sudden  no  more  credit. 

Riess:     And  how  do  you  account  for  the  end  of  the  credit? 

Roderick:   This  is  where  I  have  to  be  vague  because  I  don't  know.   The 

Jewish  people  come  in- -this  one  type --and  they  would  run  up  big 
bills,  and  they'd  go  bankrupt.   From  then  on,  all  bills  had  to 
be  paid  and  paid  on  time. 

But  your  father  was  one  of  the  early- - 

Chicken  raisers,  he  and  his  brother.   His  brother  died  when  I 
was,  oh,  probably  five  or  six  years  old.   He  kept  on  to  just 
about  the  time  of  the  Depression.   Then,  he  was  buying  this 
chicken  manure,  sending  it  to  Salinas  and  Watsonville,  and  my 
mother's  baby  sister's  husband  was  selling  it. 

He  got  into  Chinese  gambling  and  drinking. 
Riess:     The  uncle  down  there? 

Roderick:   Yes.   And  he  had  these  hand  cards  all  made  up  of  Runge  and 

Roderick.   My  father  had  all  kinds  of  credit,  but  he  had  none. 
He  was  buying  commercial  fertilizers,  the  chemicals,  and 
charging  it  all  to  my  father.   This  would  have  to  be  about  '33, 
'34,  in  the  middle  of  the  Depression.   Fifty  thousand  dollars 
was  a  lot  of  money  in  those  years. 

Riess:  Yes.  What  was  the  other  name? 

Roderick:  Runge. 

Riess:  That's  your  mother's  family  name? 

Roderick:  No.   It's  her  sister's  husband.   Her  family  was  Albush. 


Riess: 
Roderick: 


Riess:      A  hatchery  just  means  that  all  you  do  is  get  the  eggs  and--? 

Roderick:   And  hatch  them.   They  undoubtedly  sold  a  lot,  and  then  they 

raised  a  lot.   Around,  I'd  say,  the  1920s,  it  was  considered  one 
of  the  largest  chicken  ranches  at  that  time  because  it  was  all 
hand  work.   They  got  more  mechanized  before  my  father  gave  up 
raising  chickens.   I  think  then  we  were  a  very  small  outfit. 

Riess:     Did  they  candle  the  eggs? 

Roderick:   I  do  remember  once  seeing  candling,  but  it  was  more  the  weighing 
of  and  packing  the  eggs  into  great  big  boxes.   You  still  in  the 
stores  get  these  squares  that  hold,  I'd  say,  about  three  dozen 
eggs- -something  that  way.   They  had  boxes  made  that  were  two 
stacks.   I  imagine  that  they  were  about  eight  to  ten  stacks  high 
on  each  one  of  these  sections.   I  remember  when  I  was  a  small 
kid  I  used  to  have  to  do  that,  help  pack  eggs. 

Riess:     How  big  was  this  operation? 

Roderick:  They  had  about  twenty  thousand  chickens.  Nowadays  it  would  be 
considered  just  a  drop  in  the  bucket,  you  know,  because  it  all 
is  mechanized. 

Riess:     What  is  your  memory  of  the  sounds  and  smells  and  so  on  of  all 
that? 

Roderick:   My  mother  tells  when  I  was  a  tiny  kid  she  could  set  me  out  there 
in  the  brooder  houses  where  the  chicks  were  raised,  and  I'd  just 
play  with  the  chicks.   They'd  be  all  over  me,  and  they'd  come  to 
me.   My  sister  would  go  out  there  and  they'd  all  run.   She  said 
I  just  had  a  natural  feeling  for- -in  fact,  I  had  all  kinds  of 
pets  as  I  grew  up.   I  had  more  fun  playing  with  those  little 
baby  chicks  when  I  was  a  baby  myself. 

They  used  chopped  alfalfa,  which  has  a  beautiful  fragrance, 
for  the  litter  for  the  chicks  to  run  on.   I  can  still  see  the 
persons  cleaning  the  houses.   It  seemed  like  they  did  it  every 
day- -I  don't  know  how  often.   But  if  it  wasn't  cleaned  it  got  to 
smelling  terrible.   The  other  thing  was  the  diseases  that  we'd 
get  right  away  if  the  house  was  not  kept  very  clean. 

Riess:     Did  your  mother  have  a  role  in  the  actual  management? 

Roderick:   She  did  most  of  the  raising  of  the  chicks,  and  then  my  father 
and  uncle- -my  father's  brother  —  and  I  think  most  of  the  time 
they  had  another  person.   My  sister  and  I  even  gathered  the 


eggs.   We  never  liked  that  because  the  chicken  houses  got  to 
smelling  heavily  very  quickly,  you  know. 

Riess:     The  chickens  are  very  possessive  about  their  eggs,  $00,  some  of 
them. 

Roderick:   Sometimes,  yes.   Being  that  they  were  gathered  every  day,  the 
chickens  never  really  got  a  chance  to  try  to  set. 

Riess:     You  said  that  it  was  the  same  home  where  your  father  was  born, 
but  your  father  had  left  and  come  back? 

Roderick:   Yes.   My  mother  was  sixteen  and  he  was  twenty-six  when  they  were 
married.   Then  I  came  along  four  years  later.   It  probably  was 
three  years  before  I  can  remember  what  exactly  my  father  was 
like.   He  was  gray  and  bald-headed.   He  lost  his  hair  very,  very 
early. 

Riess:     And  your  mother  was  very  young. 

Roderick:   My  mother  was  very  young,  and  she  kept  her  hair  till  the  day  she 
died.   So,  I  feel  pretty  good.   I've  still  got  a  little  bit  of 
hair  on  top. 

Riess:     You've  got  a  fine  crop! 

Roderick:   Yes,  I've  got  a  fine  crop  compared  to  my  father,  but  nothing 
compared  to  my  mother. 


A  "Plant -Happy"  Family 


Riess:     You've  described  your  family  as  plant -happy.   Why? 

Roderick:   My  mother,  I  guess,  was  born  that  way.   My  father  loved  farming. 
He  loved  it.   Well,  he  had  fancy  cows  as  a  hobby  after  he  got 
rid  of  the  chickens.   And  he  raised  a  lot  of  vegetables  and 
things  to  feed  the  cows.   Our  vegetable  garden  was  more  cut 
flowers  than  it  was  vegetables.   Then  we  had  about  an  acre 
around  the  house  that  my  mother  gardened.   My  father  always 
wanted  everything  in  rows  so  he  could  get  in  with  the  horses  and 
cultivate.   My  mother,  of  course,  wanted  beauty,  so  she  had 
anything  but  rows. 

Riess:     Did  she  order  from  seed  catalogues? 

Roderick:   She  got  a  lot  of  stuff  that  way,  went  to  the  nurseries. 


I  remember  the  Depression  years.   My  father  loved  plants, 
but  he  would  not  let  my  mother  have  the  veronicas.   He  didn't 
like  them. 

Riess:     That's  that  big  bushy- - 

Roderick:   It  gets  about  three  foot  tall,  the  kind  that  my  mother  liked.   I 
remember  she  went  out  the  back  door  one  day,  and  here  she  picked 
up  a  silver  dollar.   She  jumped  in  the  car  and  went  to  the 
nursery  and  bought  two  gallon-can  veronicas,  one  red  one  and  one 
blue  one,  much  to  my  father's  disgust. 

I  can  also  remember  about  the  same  time  going  down  to 
Oakland.   Between  Richmond,  where  you  got  off  the  ferry,  and 
Oakland,  there  were  a  lot  of  little  nurseries.   This  one 
Japanese  had  a  dwarf  flowering  crabapple  bonsai,  and  he  [father] 
loved  that  thing.   The  fellow  had  propagated  two  plants.   He  had 
them  in  square  five-gallon  cans.   It  took  him  [nurseryman]  about 
three  years  before  he  would  sell  him  one  —  and  he  sold  it  for 
fifteen  dollars ,  which  would  be  about  two  hundred  and  fifty 
dollars  nowadays.   Instantly,  my  father  bought  it.   Money  was  no 
object  if  it  was  a  good  plant,  [laughs]   He  wanted  things  in 
rows ,  and  yet  he  loved  the  landscaped  area  of  the  garden  that  my 
mother  had. 

Riess:     Was  the  land  flat? 

Roderick:   It  was  slightly  sloping  ground.   It  was  west  of  Petaluma  where 

they  had  that  sand,  low  sand.   It  was  very  shallow.   It  was  only 
about  fifteen,  eighteen  inches  of  soil  over  an  impervious  hard 
pan.   We  were  about  halfway  down  this  gentle  hill,  and  all  the 
rainwater  had  to  drain  through  that  sandy  area.   Flowering 
cherry  trees,  which  they  bought  dozens  of,  fruit  trees --only 
plums  and  apples  could  stand  that  amount  of  water  in  the 
wintertime,  peaches  and  apricots  and  the  cherries  all  drowned. 

Riess:     He  really  knew  the  land  and  knew  what  was  going  on,  and  you 
became  part  of  all  of  that. 

Roderick:   I  had  my  first  plot  of  ground  by  the  time  I  was  five  years  old. 
My  mother  said  that's  how  they  got  a  lot  of  weeds  in  the  garden. 
I  had  to  grow  them  on  to  see  what  they  were  going  to  turn  out  to 
be. 


Riess:     You  mean  from  seeds? 

Roderick:   Yes,  or  anything  I  found  that  had  a  leaf  that  was  a  little  bit 
different.   I'd  dig  it  up  and  put  it  in  my  little  plot  of 


Riess: 
Roderick: 


Riess: 


Roderick: 


Riess: 


Roderick: 


Riess: 


ground.   I  don't  think  it  was  more  than  about  five  by  ten  foot 
at  the  biggest. 

That's  early  to  be  so  intrigued.   How  do  you  account  for  it? 

I  just  took  after  my  parents,  I  think.   My  mother  said  that  from 
the  time  she  was  small,  that's  all  she  could  remember  was  seeing 
plants  and  growing  them.   When  they  first  moved  to  California 
that  next  spring  on  this  piece  of  property  my  grandmother  had, 
which  was  somewhere  in  the  Placerville  area,  up  came  all  kinds 
of  narcissus  and  things  like  this,  bulbs,  and  my  mother  just 
about  went  out  of  her  mind. 

I  think  of  Petaluma  as  being  really  out  of  reach  of  the  Bay 
Area.   How  often  would  you  have  gotten  on  the  ferry  and  come 
down  and  gone  to  nurseries? 

My  father  and  mother  used  to  go  quite  often  down  to  the  Salinas  - 
Watsonville  area,  probably  once  a  month,  maybe  only  three  times 
a  year.   I  don't  quite  remember  that.   They  couldn't  work  in  the 
wintertime  hauling  the  manure  because  the  sandy  soil,  which  was 
perfect  for  the  chickens,  would  get  so  soft  they  couldn't  get 
the  trucks  in. 

My  father  had  gotten  a  crew  of  men  that  he  liked  and  could 
trust  and  everything.    So  he  did  all  kinds  of  other  things  with 
the  trucks  in  the  wintertime,  one  of  which  was  cut  Christmas 
trees  in  November  as  the  rain  started  and  haul  those  to  San 
Francisco,  or  really  to  Petaluma,  and  then  people  from  San 
Francisco  would  buy  half  a  truckload  or  whatever  they  wanted. 

After  that,  in  January,  he  found  out  there  was  a  good 
market  for  old  cars.   So  he  put  the  men  to  junking.   In  those 
days  it  was  down  in  Emeryville  where  they  took  all  that  stuff 
and  sold  it. 


I  used  to  see  those  scrap  iron  heaps  in  Emeryville. 
know  whether  they  are  still  there. 


I  don't 


When  he  was  hauling  manure  he  used  trucks,  not  barges? 

No,  no.   It  was  trucks  early  on.   They  then  hauled  it  down  to 
the  railroad  tracks  and  filled  these  what  we  called  gondolas, 
and  shipped  that  to  Salinas -Watsonville .   It  was  unloaded  there 
and  spread.   My  uncle -in- law  was  the  one  that  knew  all  about 
getting  it  unloaded  and  spread  around.   It  was  a  big  operation. 

So  that's  why  they  were  down  in  the  Bay  Area  that  often,  and 
your  mother  would  come  along  and  shop? 


Roderick:   Oh,  he  couldn't  go  without  my  mother  because  she  was  so  plant- 
happy.   We  had  a  lot  of  unusual  choice  things  in  the  garden. 


Japanese  Nurseries  and  the  War 


Riess: 


Roderick: 


Riess: 
Roderick: 


Riess : 


Roderick; 


Did  you  go  to  the  Japanese  nurseries  in  particular  because  of 
what  they  offered? 

It  was  more  along  San  Pablo  Avenue -- that ' s  when  it  was  the  only 
way  you  could  get  down  to  Oakland- -almost  all  those  nurseries  in 
through  there  were  Japanese.   A  few  Italians,  but  the  Italians 
carried  more  the  ordinary  things .   The  one  thing  I  kept 
remembering  was  the  long,  tall  yew  trees,  and  conifers,  the 
dwarf  ones .   The  Japanese  had  the  more  unusual  things .   I  can 
remember  ten,  fifteen  nurseries  along  San  Pablo  Avenue. 

Was  [Toichi]  Domoto's  nursery  there? 

I  didn't  know  about  him  till  after  the  war.   No,  I'll  take  that 
back.   When  I  started  to  go  to  junior  college  up  in  Santa  Rosa  I 
worked  part  time  in  a  nursery.   It  was  just  before  the  war,  so  I 
only  got  part  of  one  semester  in  when  war  come  along.   I  started 
work  at  the  nursery  just  after  I  got  out  of  high  school.   Twice 
the  owner  went  to  Domoto's  nursery.   That  was  before  the  war. 
Then  after  the  war  we  started  the  nursery,  and  then,  of  course, 
I  used  to  go  down  there  quite  often.   I  got  to  know  Toichi 
Domoto  very  well.   He's  a  good  friend—rarely  seen.   He's  so  old 
now,  he  doesn't  get  around  very  much. 

When  you  talk  about  unusual  things,  you're  talking  about  the 
camellias  and  the  cherries?  And  persimmons- -had  they  started 
bringing  in  Oriental  persimmons? 

We  didn't  get  persimmons  until  much  later,  after  we  started  a 
nursery.   We  knew  about  them,  and  we  knew  we  liked  them.   I 
can't  tell  you--.   I  do  remember  at  Toichi  Domoto's  that  he  had 
two  or  three  very  interesting  persimmons  there,  but  I  never  had 
one.   We  didn't  grow  them.   You  can  see  right  out  my  window 
there  I've  got  a  nice  big  persimmon  tree. 


Riess: 


It's  a  beautiful  one. 
the  nice  greens . 


It's  so  lush  in  spring,  too.   It's  one  of 


10 


Roderick:   Oh,  what  a  display  it  is  in  the  fall.   It's  the  soft  one,  and 
the  foliage  does  not  turn  very  beautiful,  but  oh,  what  a  sight 
with  the  fruits  on  it. 

Riess:     It's  sad  to  think  about  all  of  those  nurseries,  come  wartime. 

Roderick:   Yes,  and  ray  father,  when  the  war  came  along,  he  couldn't  get 
trucks,  and  all  of  his  good  men  were  gone.   He  couldn't  trust 
men.   He  and  my  brother-in-law  then  bought  a  poultry  commission 
house. 

Riess:     What  does  that  mean? 

Roderick:   It  means  that  they  bought  the  farmer's  chickens  and  sold  them  to 
the  markets  in  San  Francisco.   Never  kept  a  chicken  overnight. 

Riess:     They  were  brokers? 

Roderick:   Brokers,  yes.   Most  of  his  customers,  both  in  the  manure  and 
with  the  chickens,  were  Japanese.   They  knew  how  my  father 
dealt,  that  his  word  was  always  perfect  and  he  never  went  back 
on  that,  and  the  Japanese  liked  this.   He  knew  the  ways  that 
they  liked  to  do  business,  and  their  humor  and  all  this,  and 
they  did  everything  they  could  to  do  a  deal  with  my  father. 

So,  he  knew  the  Japanese  people  very  well.   In  fact,  at 
the  time  of  Pearl  Harbor  we  were  interviewed  for  one  whole  half 
day  by  the  F.B.I,  on  what  our  ideas  were  about  all  of  our 
Japanese  people,  and  there  were  only  two  persons  that  we  didn't 
like.   They  found  out  that  one  of  these  families- -there  was 
something  very  funny  about  them.   They  went  to  a  concentration 
camp.   That  was  great.   But  all  the  rest,  we  fought  for  them. 

Riess:     Your  family  was  interviewed  up  in  Petaluma? 
Roderick:   Well,  in  Santa  Rosa,  which  was  the  county  seat. 

One  of  this  family  that—we  really  didn't  know  them  at  all, 
but  they  were  just  funny  people.   Even  the  Japanese  called  them 
"damn  Japs."   I  heard  that  expression. 

Riess:     This  was  before  the  plans  had  been  made  for  the  camps? 

Roderick:   Yes.   This  was  immediately  after  Pearl  Harbor.   I'd  say  within  a 
week.   It  was  not  that  important  except  that  we  were  very  much 
interviewed. 

Riess:     Did  your  father  in  any  way  take  over  any  of  the  nurseries  or 
help  any  of  the  Japanese? 


11 


Roderick:   No.   We  didn't  do  anything  that  way. 

Riess:     When  these  people  you  knew  were  going  to  the  camps,  were  they 
close  enough  to  your  family  to  turn  possessions  over  to  your 
family? 

Roderick:   We  know  about  the  people  that  took  over  a  lot  of  these  ranches, 
but  there  was  nothing  much  that  we  did. 

At  the  same  time  I  was  drafted,  and  almost  every  one  of  the 
men  my  father  had  working  for  him  were  drafted.   He  had  to  get 
rid  of  all  of  his  trucks  and  try  to  see  what  else  he  wanted  to 
get  into.   He  found  this  poultry  commission  house,  and  he  went 
to  work  there --again  I'll  have  to  be  vague- -for  a  very  short 
time.   The  old  gentleman  that  owned  it  didn't  know  how  he  was 
going  to  work,  and  my  father  and  brother-in-law  then  bought  him 
out  and  took  over. 

Riess:     Got  a  fine  entrepreneurial  gene  in  your  family. 
Roderick:   We  got  into  all  kinds  of  stuff! 


From  Weeds  to  Orchids 


Riess:     Now,  let's  just  step  back  a  bit.   You  said  on  your  vita  that  you 
were  into  orchids,  as  well  as  succulents,  by  age  fourteen. 
First  you  had  had  your  plot  of  ground  where  you  were  raising  and 
examining  the  weeds . 

Roderick:   Then  by  this  time  I  was,  oh,  I'd  say  eight  years  old.   I  was  out 
of  the  little  patch  of  weeds.   I  was  expected  to  help  in  the 
garden. 

My  father- -everything  had  to  be  very  good.   He  had  fancy 
cows.   The  best  one  was  the  world's  third  highest  butterfat 
producer  at  the  time.   Of  course,  all  kinds  of  records  had  to  be 
kept  on  this.   I  liked  that  cow  because  I  could  ride  her,  she 
wouldn't  buck  me  off. 

But  before  I  was  eligible  or  big  enough  for  milking  cows 
and  things  that  way,  I  worked  in  the  garden.   We  got  up  at  five 
every  day  when  the  cows  had  to  be  milked.   I  went  off  with  my 
mother  and  helped  weed  and  water  until  seven.   By  this  time  my 
sister  would  be  working  in  the  kitchen.   (She  turned  out  to  be  a 
very  good  housewife—very  lovely  home.)  At  seven  we'd  come  in 


12 


and  have  breakfast,  get  ready  to  go  to  school.   When  I  got,  I'd 
say,  about  thirteen,  fourteen,  then  I  went  out  and  helped  ray 
father  with  the  cows. 

Riess:  This  was  not  an  unusual  life  in  Petaluma,  where  maybe  the  rest 
of  your  classmates  started  their  days  with  a  certain  amount  of 
farm  work  too? 

Roderick:   Yes.   It  was  more  a  farming  community.   But  in  the  town  of 

Petaluma  we  had  a  lot  of  well-to-do  people.   Some  of  those  were 
friends,  but  we  never  chummed  when  I  was  in  school.   Before  I 
went  to  high  school,  which  was  in  the  town  of  Petaluma,  I  went 
to  the  grammar  school  my  father  went  to  in  the  country. 


Riess:     You  were  in  school  with  kids  who  had  the  same  experiences. 

Roderick:   We  had  some  of  the  George  P.  McNear  family  in  there,  and  they 
had  a  little  clique  that  stayed  together. 

Riess:     Which  clique  is  that?   Is  that  the  farming  clique  or  the  town 
clique? 

Roderick:   It  was  the  wealthy  clique.   You  have  a  little  bit  of  this  at  all 
schools,  I  imagine. 

Riess:  How  about  the  Kortums?  Did  you  know  the  Kortums? 
Roderick:  Yes.  One  Kortum  was  over  at  the  Maritime  Museum. 
Riess:  Yes,  Karl  Kortum.  And,  Bill  Kortum  was-- 

Roderick:   --a  veterinarian.   And  their  sister,  she's  the  one  I  really 
know.   She  lives  in  Santa  Rosa. 

Riess:     They  were  farming,  weren't  they? 

Roderick:   Yes.   They  were  more  dairy.   I  can't  quite  remember  much  more 
than  that.   I  know  where  the  house  is.   I  think  it's  still 
standing.   [Being  remodelled,  September  1990.   W.R.  ] 

Riess:     So,  that  was  your  typical  day.   I  interrupted  you.   You  were 
saying  that  by  the  time  you  were  fourteen-  - 

Roderick:   I  had  started  cactus  and  succulents  as  a  kid.   I'd  say  I  was 
about  six,  seven,  eight  when  I  did  that.   In  fact,  my  father 
built  a  tiny  hothouse.   And  I  saw  these  ads  in  the  old,  old 
Sunset  Magazine  for  orchids,  quite  an  article  on  them  in  several 


Riess : 


Riess: 


13 


places.   Come  the  Oakland  Garden  Show,  I  got  my  mother  to  bring 
me  down.   There  was  a  full  carload  of  us ,  I  remember.   We 
stopped  at  this  one  nursery  that  sold  orchids,  and  I  bought  my 
first  orchid  plants.   I  think  I  was  about  fourteen. 

And  that  nursery- -they  were  displaying  at  the  Oakland  Garden 
Show? 


Roderick:   No.   They  didn't,  I  don't  think,  have  anything  at  the  Oakland 
Garden  Show.   We  came  to  see  the  Oakland  Garden  Show,  and  I 
rushed  the  family  through  the  show  as  quick  as  possible. 


So  you  could  go  shopping. 


Roderick:   So  we'd  go  shopping,  which  was  perfectly  all  right.   I  had  saved 
my  money,  and  I  spent  it. 


The  Oakland  Spring  Garden  Show 


Riess:     That  garden  show  is  very  famous. 

Roderick:   Yes.   Howard  Gilkey  made  it,  that  show.   Howard  Gilkey  was  a 

real  character.  He'd  even  tell  you  how  great  Howard  Gilkey  was! 
I've  seen  some  of  his  gardens  that  he  landscaped.  They  were  all 
right;  they  weren't  great,  but  they  were  all  right. 

But  what  he  did  in  that  building  for  the  show  was 
unbelievable.   He  built  these  great  big  giant  redwoods,  about 
ten  feet  in  diameter.   They  went  up  to  the  ceiling  in  that 
building.   Then  he  put  limbs--.   How  the  devil  he  did  it--. 

Riess:     You  mean  he  built  them  with  bark  and--? 

Roderick:   Yes.   They  were  all  hollow  inside.   It  was  just  the  bark. 

Someplace  in  the  building  would  be  waterfalls  to  get 
humidity  to  keep  the  plants  growing,  to  keep  them  at  their 
prime . 

Riess:     What  was  the  building  that  he  was  in? 

Roderick:   The  building  down  somewhere  near  where  the  Oakland  Museum  is. 
Right  beyond  there  was  a  big  auditorium. 

Riess:     The  auditorium  that's  still  there? 


14 


Roderick:  I  guess.  A  big,  flat  floor.  He'd  get  these  nurseries  to  either 
force  or  hold  back  rhododendrons- -great  specimens  of  them  with 
masses  of  buds- -and  have  just  one  big  splash  of  color  throughout 
that  building.  It  was  an  impossible  garden  thing,  you  know,  for 
doing  in  your  garden,  but  it  was  absolutely  beyond  belief  to  see 
all  these  big  masses  and  masses  of  color.  Masses  of  them. 

Nothing  at  all  to  have  a  six- inch  pot  of  hydrangeas,  maybe 
all  pink.   There  would  maybe  be  two  hundred  pots  of  those  in 
that  one  splash  of  color.   Then  there  would  be  the 
rhododendrons,  and  some  of  those  would  be  six,  eight  foot  tall. 
Big  swaths  of  these,  all  maybe  'pink  pearl,'  all  pink  ones, 
maybe  ten  of  those.   That  would  fill  my  whole  house,  you  know! 
It  was  just  beyond  belief,  the  spectacular  colors  that  he  did! 

Riess:     Do  you  think  that  that  was  a  greater  day  for  gardens  than  it  is 
today? 

Roderick:   No.   I  think  now  you've  got  more  people  gardening  for  the  one 

reason  that  so  many  places,  like  here  in  Orinda,  you're  supposed 
to  keep  your  place  looking  like  something.   (They  don't  plant 
very  nice  things.)   And  the  freeways  now  have  gotten  lots  of 
plants  planted  out  around  interchanges  to  make  it  look  nice.   I 
think  people  are  doing  more  here  than  they  did  in  those  days. 

Riess:     You  mentioned  Sunset.   I  wondered  how  much  you  would  hook  up 
that  kind  of  consciousness  of  gardens  with  Sunset' s  impact. 

Roderick:   In  the  olden  days  Sunset  Magazine  was  far  superior  to  what  it  is 
today.   The  main  part  mostly  was  on  gardening.   Today  you  open 
up  the  main  part,  and  it  could  be  on  houses,  it  could  be  on 
anything.   In  those  days  I  could  open  that  main,  first  part- -it 
was  on  plants.   Houses  and  things  that  way  were  farther  in  the 
back,  and  then  cooking  and  things  like  that  were  in  the  end. 
But  the  first  part  used  to  be  mostly  gardening.   I  think  this 
helped  to  get  us  to  be  as  good  gardeners  as  you're  seeing. 


Earlv  Attempts  at  Rock  Gardens .  Native  Gardens 


Riess:     What  if  the  orientation  of  all  of  this  had  been  to  working  with 
the  native  plants.   What  a  different  landscape  we'd  all  have! 
Was  there  any  kind  of  appreciation  for  native  grasses  and  shrubs 
then  at  all? 

Roderick:   I  can  remember,  I'd  say,  about  1932  my  mother  and  one  of  her 

best  friends  went  in  for  a  rock  garden.   It  wasn't  very  much  of 


15 


Riess : 


Roderick: 


Riess : 
Roderick: 


Riess : 


Roderick: 


a  rock  garden.   It  was  a  shady  place  in  both  Mrs.  King's  and  my 
mother's  place.   They  went  in  for  ferns  and  all  the  little  shady 
plants.   They  went  out  and  collected  in  the  wild.   They  had  the 
first  little  bits  of  native  gardens  that  I  can  ever  remember. 

For  some  unknown  reason  our  natives  have  not  made  as  much 
hit  until  here  just  recently  as  they  have  in  Europe.   They  will 
do  anything  there  to  grow  our  California  natives. 

I've  read  that  they  were  collecting  and  hybridizing  in  the  early 
nineteenth  century. 

Within  the  first  five  years  of  our  California  poppy  in 
cultivation,  they  already  had  three  different  colors.   They  got 
these  color  breaks. 

Here  in  the  East  Bay  you'll  find  more  people  planting 
California  natives  than  almost  anyplace  else  in  this  state. 

And  it's  happening  now,  rather  than  1932  or  whatever. 

Yes.   These  few  years  of  drought  that  we've  had,  there's  more 
and  more.   And  then  we  have  one  real  good  landscape  architect 
that's  planning  drought -tolerant  gardens.   There's  a  couple  of 
others  that's  doing  fair,  but  Ron  Lutsko  is  probably  the  best  in 
this.   He's  a  young  fellow.   I  know  last  week  he  was  gone.   He 
had  several  estates  that  he  was  planting  down  around  the  San 
Jose  to  Carmel  area.    Last  year  he  was  commuting  to  Los  Angeles 
because  of  a  big  professional  building  of  some  kind  that  was  all 
being  done  in  natives  or  drought- tolerant  plants. 

But  the  dream  garden  of  Howard  Gilkey  would  be  a  damp  and  floral 
place . 

For  that  one  week  it  was  spectacular.   I've  seen  a  couple  of  the 
places  —  they  haven't  been  kept  up- -such  as  the  city  park  in 
Oakland.   Yes,  it  was  spectacular.   The  walls,  the  way  they  were 
built,  and  the  design  that  was  used.   But  it  was  just  something 
like  one  of  these  big  estates  that  makes  a  big  show  and  that's 
it. 


Mother' s  Blue  Ribbon  Garden  in  Petaluma 


Riess:  When  you  came  down  with  your  parents  on  those  trips  to  Salinas - 
Watsonville  and  stopping  at  the  nurseries  and  so  on,  were  there 
famous  gardens  to  go  and  visit? 


16 


Roderick:   Not  that  I  ever  remember  my  parents  ever  doing  that.   No,  I 

don't  remember  that.    I  remember  going  to  San  Francisco  once  in 
awhile.  Then  we'd  make  a  drive  through  Golden  Gate  Park.   But  we 
didn't  do  much  in  those  days.   We  had  in  Petaluma  the  garden 
clubs . 

I  know  by  1935  I  was  the  youngest  member  of  the  Petaluma 
Garden  Club.   I  know  I  was  into  that.   And  they  had  these  great 
flower  shows.   We  had  judges  come  from  all  over  for  the  flower 
shows.   I  know  I  couldn't  have  been  more  than  fifteen  and  into 
the  first  flower  show.  My  mother,  of  course,  showed  all  kinds 
of  stuff.   Piles  and  piles  of  blue  ribbons. 

Riess:     Very  competitive? 
Roderick:   Oh,  yes. 

My  mother  started  out  with  about  three  things,  annuals,  and 
worked  up  some  very  good  forms.   I  went  and  hand-pollinated  and 
it  got  so  we  had  our  own  strains  of  China  asters  and  African 
marigolds- -and  what  was  the  other  thing?   Something  else, 
annual,  that  went  into  the  vegetable  garden,  and  we  rogued  and 
hand- pollinated. 

Riess:     How  did  you  know  how  to  do  that- -the  hand-pollinating? 
Roderick:   Looked  at  it  and  did  it. 

Riess:  I  mean,  had  you  been  around  nursery  people  and  seen  how  breeding 
and  hybridizing  was  done? 

Roderick:   No.   It  just  came  natural,  I  think. 

Riess:     And  you  hadn't  gotten  out  a  book  from  the  library  or  anything 
like  that? 

Roderick:   I  remember  getting  chicken  feathers  to  use--.   I'd  pull  them  out 
of  the  wings  of  the  chicken—or  tail  feathers,  stripped  down  to 
little  things.   Finally,  my  folks  did  get  camel  hair  brushes, 
but  first  I  used  chicken  feathers- -just  the  tips  of  chicken 
feathers . 

Riess:     Had  your  mother  been  doing  it  before  you? 

Roderick:  I  don't  remember.  I  know  she  was  selecting.  She  grew  up  almost 
all  of  her  own  annuals.  We  had  a  hotbed.  In  the  winter  all  the 
soil  was  taken  out  and  cow  manure  was  put  down  almost  six  inches 
on  the  bottom,  and  then  about  six  inches  of  the  soil  above  that. 


17 


Riess: 


Roderick: 


Riess : 


Roderick: 


This  was  a  raised  bed.   It  was  facing  south  with  the  windows  on 
top  to  keep  the  rain  out,  keep  the  warmth  in. 

She  would  plant  her  seeds,  I  would  say,  early  March  so  they 
would  be  big  enough  by  mid-April  to  plant  out.   She  raised  the 
annuals  by  the  tens  of  thousands.   Some  of  this  in  the  very 
beginning  was  kale  for  feeding  the  chickens,  but  she  raised 
hundreds  and  hundreds  of  annuals  and  had  these  big  beds. 
Nothing  at  all  to  plant  a  hundred  to  a  hundred  and  fifty,  say, 
African  marigolds  in  one  bed,  and  a  big  row  or  two  out  through 
the  vegetable  garden. 


You  said  that  she  didn't  want  things  in  rows. 
her  garden  each  year? 


Did  she  design 


Yes.   She  had  these  big,  long  swoops,  and  we  had  moss  lawns,  or 
really  this  Irish  moss  or  Scotch  moss- -it's  a  little  flowering 
plant  that  looks  like  moss.   And  walks,  one  big  main  walk  so  she 
could  run  a  wheelbarrow  up  and  down  without  crushing  the  lawns. 
She  would  start  all  the  beds  with  one  type  of  a  border, 
generally  ageratum  or  lobelia  or  something  that  way,  according 
to  what  all  colors  that  she  was  going  to  put  in. 

Then  with  the  African  marigolds  she'd  probably  buy  seed  and 
grow  that  on.   She'd  have  a  French  marigold,  probably  a  bronze 
color,  then  the  African  marigolds  behind  that.   If  it  was,  say, 
the  asters,  she  would  probably  put  more  of  a  blue  that  would 
combine  with  the  other  colors  there. 

She  generally  had  in  the  spring  lots  of  stocks  and 
snapdragons.   In  one  big  bed  she  had  a  big  white  flowering 
peach.   She  built  the  bed  up  high  enough  that  it  would  survive. 
She  had  pink  tulips  underneath  that  that  would  come  up  every 
year.   And  then  maybe  lavender  stocks.   Then  she  had  thousands 
and  thousands  of  daffodils,  old-fashioned  daffodils. 

She  planted  Linaria  seed  in  with  the  daffodils  and  it  came 
into  bloom  after  the  daffodils  were  finished  blooming,  and  by 
the  time  it  was  finished  blooming,  then  she'd  pull  out  the  tops 
of  the  daffodils  and  the  Linaria  all  at  once  and  then  put  in  her 
border  of  summer  annuals.   Of  course,  I  was  expected  to  do  my 
share  of  that. 

[laughs]   That's  pretty  relentless. 

Yes.   It  was  a  full-time  job.   Her  garden  was  almost  as  bad  as 
Ruth  Bancroft  over  here  in  Walnut  Creek.   My  mother  was  her  main 
gardener,  just  as  Ruth  is. 


18 


Riess:     How  did  your  succulents  do  in  your  glass  house? 

Roderick:   They  did  poor.   We  found  out  that  they  did  better  outside,  but 
we  did  raise  a  few  other  things  that  were  tender.  %  even  had  a 
couple  hibiscus  plants  planted  in  the  ground.   But  the  roof  was 
only  seven  feet,  and  in  a  hothouse  you  should  have  at  least  ten 
foot  to  get  air  circulation.   Plus,  we  had  to  chop  it  out 
because  it  was  pushing  the  glass  out.   We  had  just  a  little 
electric  heater  which  did  not  give  any  good  heat  for  keeping  the 
orchids. 

Then  my  father  started  to  build  a  big  hothouse.   We  made  it 
big  enough- -I  think  it  was  sixty  foot  long,  and  it  must  have 
been  twenty  foot  wide  —  and  about  this  time  is  when  we  decided  to 
start  a  nursery.   That  came  right  after  the  war. 

I  was  discharged  early  because  I  got  tuberculosis.   I  came 
home,  and  I  stayed  in  a  tent  just  outside  the  house  for,  I 
guess,  a  year  and  a  half.   (They  never  did  find  spots  on  my 
lungs.)   Of  course,  we  had  all  the  milk,  cream,  vegetables, 
fruits,  a  lot  of  fruits.   In  those  days  my  mother  used  to  can  a 
lot  of  these  things,  so  there  was  all  kinds  of  good  food.   My 
father  always  raised  his  own  meat.   He  rented  a  big  freezing 
place  not  too  far  from  my  home,  and  he'd  put  a  whole  beef  in 
there,  and  maybe  a  pig,  and  two  or  three  lambs. 

Riess:     That's  really  a  wonderful  land-of -plenty  story! 

Roderick:   Boy,  we  lived  high  on  the  hog.   In  fact,  during  the  war  years  we 
planted  very  few  annuals  in  the  vegetable  garden.   But  my 
mother's  one  or  two  sisters,  my  grandmother- -and  my  sister  by 
this  time  was  married  and  had  a  boy- -they  all  worked  in  the 
vegetable  garden.   They  all  canned,  especially  at  my  mother's 
house.   They  would  can  two  or  three  hundred  quarts  of  each 
thing. 

Riess:     Sounds  like  this  was  for  more  than  their  own  use. 

Roderick:   This  was  for  their  own  use.   We  lived  all  winter  and  the  rest  of 
the  year  on  that.   I'd  say  that  garden  was  a  good  quarter  acre. 
That  beautiful  sand  and,  of  course,  we  had  all  our  own  water. 


19 


War  Experience.  Garden  Experience 


Riess:     What  was  your  war  experience? 

Roderick:   I  was  drafted  immediately  after  Pearl  Harbor.   My  mother  always 
said  that  when  she  became  a  grandmother  she  was  going  to  get  a 
motorcycle  and  raise  hell.   Well,  Pearl  Harbor  come  along.   A 
few  days  later  she  become  a  grandmother,  and  a  couple  of  days 
after  that  I  was  drafted.   She  grew  up  very  rapidly. 

I  was  taken  to  Camp  Roberts.   Never  finished  my  full 
training  there.   Somehow  I  said  I  would  be  very  good  at 
camouflage  and  things  that  way  because  I  knew  plants.   Well, 
they  didn't  have  that,  so  I  become  an  Army  cook.   That  was  very 
good  because  I  cooked  already.   In  wintertime  when  we  were  kids, 
when  we  couldn't  get  outside,  my  mother  would  have  "cooking 
day."   It  might  be  a  roast  beef,  or  it  might  be  cookies,  or  it 
could  be  how  to  prepare  some  interesting  vegetables.   So  I  got 
to  be  an  Army  cook. 

Riess:     And  you  avoided  the  infantry,  it  sounds  like. 

Roderick:   I  was  in  the  coast  artillery.   It  was  about  the  fifteenth, 

somewhere  around  there,  of  December  when  I  was  drafted.   I  was 
sent  to  Camp  Roberts.   They  took  me  in  the  first  part  of  January 
and  we  were  supposed  to  finish  our  training  by,  I  think  it  was, 
the  first  of  April.   But  by  mid-March  I  was  on  a  troop  transport 
to  Hawaii.   I  was  in  the  first  replacement  after  Pearl  Harbor 
over  there,  one  of  the  first  batches.   I  spent  my  time  in  Hawaii 
as  an  Army  cook  up  at  Diamond  Head. 

Riess:     What  could  be  better? 

Roderick:   Yes,  because  on  my  days  off  I  got  into  a  lot  of  the  estates. 

Got  so  anytime  I  wanted  to  go  in  any  of  them  that  I'd  go  in  the 
employees'  entrances,  and  I'd  go  anyplace.   One  fellow  had  a 
whole  garden  of  orchids. 

Interestingly,  one  of  the  fellows  that  worked  for  ray  father 
wound  up  in  Alaska  in  the  Aleutian  Islands,  and  he  had  an  aunt 
and  uncle  in  Honolulu.   I'd  been  there  for  quite  a  few  months 
before  letters  could  get  around  to  where  everybody  was.   My 
mother  kept  up  with  all  these  good  employees  that  we  lost  during 
•the  war,  where  everybody  was,  what  went  on.   Finally  this  fellow 
wrote  and  said  for  me  to  go  look  up  his  aunt  and  uncle.   It 
turned  out  that  he  was  head  of  the  agricultural  department  of 
the  University  of  Hawaii.   Boy,  did  that  ever  start  opening  up 
places ! 


20 


Riess:     Places  to  go  and  visit? 
Roderick:   Yes.   He  was  a  fantastic  person. 

From  there  I  got  sick.   They  sent  me  back  to  Virginia. 
Riess:     How  did  you  contract  tuberculosis? 

Roderick:   I  have  no  idea  how  I  did  that.   I  was  sent  back  to  Virginia  and 
seemed  to  be  all  right  for  awhile.   Then  again  I  got  sick,  and 
they  discharged  me --got  rid  of  me  as  quick  and  as  easy  as  they 
possibly  could.   They  were  trying  to  put  me  into  a  sanitarium, 
but  they  couldn't  find  any  lesions  in  my  lungs.   The  social 
worker  that  my  mother  was  working  with  saw  all  of  the  stuff  at 
my  mother's  place,  and  she  said  if  they  would  put  up  a  place  out 
where  I'd  be  in  air  all  the  time  it  would  be  the  best  place  to 
convalesce.   Well,  that's  what  they  did. 

By  the  time  that  I  was  finished  with  all  of  my  examinations 
and  everything,  we  were  building  up  more  and  more  plant 
material.   My  father  then--. 

Riess:  What  do  you  mean  "your"  examinations? 

Roderick:  First  at  Fort  Miley,  then  finally  up  at  Santa  Rosa. 

Riess:  You  mean  your  physical  examinations? 

Roderick:  Yes. 

My  father  was  building  up  the  plant  material,  and  finally  I 
was  able  to  do  some  work,  and  I  went  to  work  at  the  military 
post  out  at  Two  Rock.   It  was  called  Two  Rock  Ranch.   It  was  the 
communications  post  where  the  Japanese  code  was  broken. 

Riess:     This  is  where  the  R.C.A.  installation  is  now? 

Roderick:   Now  it's  not  R.C.A.   It's  something  else- -maritime  school  or 
something.   I  was  a  fireman  there  for  a  year  and  a  half.   Got 
enough  money  to  buy  the  first  big  block  of  plants.   My  father 
was  doing  the  building,  so  we  kind  of  worked  on  all  of  it 
together. 

Riess:     I  have  a  look  on  my  face  that  you'll  come  to  know  that  means 

that  we  can't  go  forward  because  we  have  to  loop  back  to  answer 
a  few  questions  that  are  on  ray  mind.   You  said  that  you  had  gone 
to  Santa  Rosa  Junior  College.   This  was  right  after  high  school 
you  went  there? 


21 


Roderick:   Yes.   I  didn't  go  for  a  year.   I  guess  I  worked  at  this  nursery 
in  Santa  Rosa  getting  money  together  and  such  things  as  that. 

Riess:     Then  when  you  were  eighteen  or  nineteen  or  so,  you  went  to 
junior  college.   What  did  you  study  there? 

Roderick:   I  studied  under  Dr.  Milo  Baker,  who  was  the  very  famous 
botanist,  but  I  never  quite  finished. 

Riess:     Junior  college  was  two  years,  but  you  didn't  have  time  to  finish 
the  two  years? 

Roderick:   I  didn't  even  finish  really  one  semester.   Pearl  Harbor  come 

along.   You  could  say  I  was  a  complete  failure.   Really,  I  got 
enough  information  to  know  how  to  use  a  book.   That  was  it. 

Riess:     How  was  your  high  school  education  in  sciences?  Was  that 
helpful? 

Roderick:   Yes.   I  took  everything  I  could.   There  was  only  one  thing  I  got 
a  D  in,  and  that  was  chemistry.   Very  poor  at  such  things  as 
chemistry. 

Riess:     Did  they  have  Future  Farmers  of  America? 

Roderick:   They  had  something  of  that,  but  I  didn't  go  in  for  that  because 
I  knew  that  I  wanted  to  go  more  into  botany  and  horticulture.   I 
didn't  know  for  sure  at  that  time  what. 

Riess:     Did  you  want  very  much  to  have  more  of  an  education,  or  did  you 
not  see  that  that  was  necessarily  a  prerequisite? 

Roderick:   I  wanted  to  go  on,  but  when  I  got  thrown  out  of  the  Army  it  was 
a  heck  of  a  job  trying  to  get  enough  money,  first  to  go  to 
school --at  that  time  there  was  no  such  thing  as  the  G.I.  Bill 
and  it  would  have  cost  quite  a  little  bit,  and  I  couldn't  really 
work.   And  we  had  enough  plants  in  the  garden  that  we  could 
propagate,  and  I  knew  the  wholesale  nurseries  from  before  the 
war  where  I  had  worked,  I  knew  who  to  contact  and  all  this. 
Being  fireman  out  at  this  military  post- -there  was  no  real  work 
to  that  at  all,  except  once  in  awhile  just  a  little  bit. 

By  the  time  that  we  got  the  nursery  going,  then  these 
different  things  for  the  veterans  [G.I.  Bill]  came  out,  but  we 
already  had  the  nursery  going,  and  we  had  it  for  fifteen  years 
when  my  father  died. 


22 


Learning  Plants 


Riess:     Did  you  take  correspondence  courses  by  any  chance,  or  anything 
like  that? 

Roderick:   No.   But  I  had  all  the  books  that  I  could  lay  my  hands  on.   I 

spent  all  of  my  evenings  in  the  books.   I  did  my  own  education. 

Riess:     When  you  got  entre  to  the  gardens  that  you  wanted  to  visit  in 
Hawaii,  and  when  you  went  into  those  gardens,  did  you  take 
written  notes?  How  did  you  approach  those  gardens? 

Roderick:   I  didn't  know  in  those  years  that  you  had  to  take  notes.   I  was 
always  told  that  you  remembered,  or  else  you're  not  using  your 
brain. 

Riess:     You  developed  that  capacity  to  remember? 

Roderick:   I  did  then,  but  I'm  finding  now  that  I  have  to  write  things  down 
or  else. 

Riess:     You  said  when  you  started  the  nursery  with  your  father  you  had 
all  the  books  you  could  lay  your  hands  on.   Did  you  at  that 
point  decide  that  you  had  to  learn  things  systematically,  and 
write  out  the  flower  families  and  so  on,  or  did  you  just  read  it 
and  remember  it? 

Roderick:   In  fact,  there's  still  a  lot  of  the  books  right  here  in  my 
bookshelf. 


Riess:     What  I'm  wondering  is  whether  because  you  were  self-taught, 
whether  you  learned  flower  families  or  learned  systems  and 
taxonomies  in  a  whole  different  way? 

Roderick:   Yes.   In  high  school  I  didn't  pay  too  much  attention  to  plant 
families.   It's  just  what  the  plant  was. 

Riess:     You  mean  common  name? 

Roderick:   No,  scientific  names.   Chinese  houses  were  Chinese  houses 

because  they  were  Chinese  houses.   It  wasn't  because  they  were 
Collins ia,  which  belongs  to  the  Scrophularia  family.   That 
didn't  mean  anything  at  first.   But  when  I  started  with  the 
nursery,  then  it  become  more  important  to  know  some  of  these 
things.   When  I  started  to  work  for  the  University  it  was 
imperative  to  know  this. 


23 


Riess: 


Roderick 


Riess: 
Roderick: 

Riess : 


The  botanist  I  worked  with  for  so  many  years  was  extremely 
slow  in  trying  to  get  these  things,  and  I  had  to  furnish  class 
material.   And  the  person  that  was  setting  up  the  classes  had 
certain  plant  families  and  certain  genera,  class  material,  that 
he  had  to  have .   This  is  where  I  really  got  my  education  the 
correct  way.   The  first  way  I  learned  was  more  from 
horticulture,  and  then  all  of  a  sudden  into  botany. 


How  does  that  distinction  work? 
grows? 


You  know  a  plant  by  how  it 


That's  the  first  way  I  learned  how  it  grows.   Then,  what  the 
plant  was:   is  it  going  to  get  the  color  I  want?   Is  it  going  to 
get  the  size  I  want?  Will  it  grow  on  this  kind  of  soil?   Then 
all  of  a  sudden  we  got  the  nursery  and  I  had  to  start  playing  it 
from  a  botanical  way,  but  not  complete  botanical.   Still  had  to 
know  how  it  grew,  but  also  what  that  correct  name  was  and  how  it 
belonged  a  little  bit  in  botany.   When  I  started  working  at  the 
University,  then  it  went  from  horticulture  more  to  botanical. 
So,  then  I  had  to  kind  of  reverse  and  figure  out  how  they--. 

How  did  you  do  that?   Did  you  get  out  the  books  once  again? 

Sure.  Put  my  nose  in  the  books.  I  have  a  T.V.  set  now  because 
my  mother  had  a  stroke.  I  never  had  a  T.V.  set  till  she  bought 
the  T.V.  set  two  weeks  before  her  stroke. 

Your  evenings  were  spent  with  your  books. 


Roderick:   With  my  books.   Now  I  have  that  darn  idiot  thing.   I  generally 
watch  just  news. 


1921  Roderickia  waynii  (seedling) 

1940  R.  petalumii  var.  youthii 

R.  youthii  var.  noseinbooksii 

1970  R.  plantsmanii  var.  bulbi 

Californicae 
generositae 
international!! 
hateyouii- 


24 


II  NURSERY  BUSINESS,  1945-1959 


Hard  Work:   Propagating.  Dealing  With  Customers.  Staying  Ahead## 


Riess:     Did  your  father  defer  to  your  knowledge  when  he  put  the  nursery 
together? 

Roderick:   I  knew  the  plants.   Of  course,  my  mother  worked  in  that-- 

couldn't  keep  her  nose  out  either.   She  had  to  get  into  it.   But 
the  only  thing  my  father  wanted  was  good  plants. 

Riess :     You  said  there  were  a  lot  of  nurseries  up  there  in  Petaluma? 

Roderick:   There  was  really  only  one  other  competitor  in  Petaluma  at  that 
time ,  and  then  there  were  several  others  come  in  about  the  time 
that  we  were  closing  out.   Also,  at  the  same  time  we  closed  out, 
my  father  died,  and  then  the  chicken  industry  went  to  pot.   We 
were  out  in  the  country.   We  depended  mostly  on  the  farmers. 
They  couldn't  afford  to  buy  anything  luxurious,  which  meant 
plants . 

We  were  doing  extremely  poor  there  the  last  six  months 
after  my  father  died.   I  could  see  the  writing  on  the  wall,  that 
either  I  had  to  go  head  over  heels  in  debt,  buy  a  piece  of 
property  in  town  or  someplace,  or- -I  didn't  like  fighting  with 
the  customers. 

Riess:     You  had  this  business  for  fourteen  years? 

Roderick:   Fifteen  years. 

Riess:     Fifteen  years.   What  was  your  role  in  the  nursery? 

Roderick:   Running  it,  because  my  father  had  his  business  and  all  his 

little  things  that  he  was  doing,  and  I  did  the  whole  business  of 
tht  thing. 

Riess:     So  you  did  sales? 

i 


25 


Roderick:   Sales  and  propagation  and  trying  to  do  landscaping—very  low 

amount  of  that  because  the  nursery  itself  took  too  much  time.   I 
used  to  propagate  a  lot  of  our  camellias.   I  used  to  graft  about 
three  to  four  thousand  camellias  every  year.   I  tried 
propagating  rhododendrons  and  some  of  those  things ,  but  it  was 
too  difficult,  too  much  work  for  what  you  get  out  of  it. 

Riess:     A  lot  of  labor.   Did  you  have  assistants? 

Roderick:  No.  Did  most  of  it  myself.  The  nursery  was  never  kept  quite  up 
to  snuff  because  I  didn't  have  the  time.  I  could  not  get  enough 
fertilizer  around.  I  could  not  keep  the  weeds  down  as  good  as  I 
wanted.  It  drove  me  crazy.  That's  what  I  hated  about  the  whole 
thing,  plus  certain  persons  that  you  had  to  fight  with  the  whole 
time. 

Riess:     Customers,  you're  talking  about? 

Roderick:   Customers. 

Riess:     What  kind  of  things  did  you  have  to  fight  with  customers  about? 

Roderick:  People  that  wanted  to  buy  a  good  plant  and  then  would  not  give 
it  the  care,  and  then  it  was  all  my  fault  that  the  plant  died. 
Such  things  as  that. 

Riess:     You  got  into  installation  then,  also? 

Roderick:   A  little  bit,  not  too  much.   There  was  just  so  much--.   We 

covered  so  much  space,  we  had  so  many  plant  materials  in  the 

place  that  we  just  couldn't  quite  keep  up.  You  have  to  keep  the 
hothouses  going. 

I  found  things  that  no  other  nursery  was  propagating,  and 
I'd  go  into  that.   I  started  to  really  get  the  fuschias  going  in 
Petaluma  because  Victor  Reiter  is  a  close  friend.   I  used  to  go 
and  get  my  new  plants  from  him  and  propagate  those .   Then 
everybody  got  into  fuschias ,  so  I  got  out  of  fuschias . 

Then  I  started  tuberous  root  begonias  in  pots,  plus  beds  of 
those  for  people  to  come  and  dig.   That  got  too  common,  and  then 
we  got  a  fungus  disease  in  them  that  was  too  much  work,  so  I  got 
out  of  that.   I  think  I  went  into  geraniums.   And  by  this  time 
we  had  a  lot  of  orchids,  so  we  sold  some  cut  flowers  of  our 
orchids,  and  I'd  divide  the  plants  and  sell  some  of  those,  too, 
to  get  rid  of  some  of  that  kind  of  stuff.   Always  had  things 
going  all  the  time. 


26 


Fellow  Nurserymen:  Victor  Reiter.  Toichi  Domoto 


Riess:     How  had  you  built  up  this  network?  How  did  you  know  Victor 
Reiter? 

Roderick:   He  had  a  little  nursery,  which  he  was  running  in  the  red  to  cut 
off  his  income  tax.   He  still  has  the  largest- -well ,  he's  dead 
now,  but  the  family  still  has  the  largest  private  piece  of 
property,  I  think,  in  all  of  San  Francisco. 

Riess:     Where  is  that? 

Roderick:   It's  up  on  the  side  of  Sutro  Mountain,  not  too  far  from  the  U.C. 
Hospital,  on  Stanyan  Street- -1195 ,  I  know  that.   Four  and  a  half 
acres,  I  think,  of  garden  the  nursery  used  to  be.   Now  it's 
mostly  weeds  and  poison  oak. 

Victor  Reiter  was  way  up  in  the  plant  world.   He  was,  I 
guess  you  can  say,  the  dean  of  the  horticulturists  for  many, 
many  years.   Lot  of  interesting  stories  I  could  tell  about  him, 
too . 

Riess:     Did  you  belong  to  organizations  in  common? 
Roderick:   Yes.   California  Horticultural  Society. 
Riess:     Was  he  one  of  your  suppliers  back  in  1945? 

Roderick:   He  would  have  been  one  of  those,  seeing  that  he  probably  started 
about  that  time  ten  years  earlier. 

Carla  Reiter  and  I  were  talking  the  other  night,  trying  to 
figure  out  how  long  it  was  that  we'd  known  one  another.   I 
bought  their  oldest  daughter  her  first  pair  of  shoes. 

Riess:     What  was  he  your  supplier  for? 

Roderick:   He  had  fuschias  and  rock  garden  plants  —  all  these  kinds  of 
little  things,  choice  things. 

Riess:     Who  supplied  really  large  plant  materials,  trees? 

Roderick:   In  the  olden  days  the  first  of  the  big  ones  was  W.B.  Clark, 

which  was  down  in  San  Jose.   In  fact  I  even  knew  W.B.  before  he 
died,  and  he  must  have  died  about  1950.   An  old,  old,  old 
nursery,  and  huge.   Grew  lots  and  lots  of  things  that  they  dug 


27 


out  every  year,  you  know.   They  produced  a  lot  of  the  modern 
lilacs  and  a  lot  of  the  modern  flowering  quince.   They  did  a  lot 
of  hybridizing  in  those  days.   A  lot  of  our  good  old  shrubs  are 
from  them. 

Riess:  When  you  sold  them  from  your  nursery,  was  that  maybe  the  first 
of  such  a  plant  up  in  Petaluma?  Do  you  think  your  nursery  had 
that  kind  of  role? 

Roderick:   Yes,  we  had  a  lot.   In  Berkeley  is  the  Berkeley  Horticultural 
Nursery.   Ken  Doty's  father  had  huge  growing  areas  up  in  the 
Portland  area  and  he  used  to  come  and  get  cuttings  and  grafts 
from  my  mother's  garden.   Then  he  would  send,  in  exchange, 
plants  from  his  nursery  in  Berkeley  [Berkeley  Horticultural 
Nursery]  that  were  so  few  and  so  rare  that  we  didn't  even  list 
them. 

Some  of  them,  they  were  so  rare  that  I  wouldn't  even  sell 
them.   I'd  give  them  to  Victor  Reiter,  or  maybe  to  Toichi 
Domoto.   They  were  too  delicate  for  me  to  propagate,  and  I 
didn't  have  the  time  to  take  care  of  them.   You  see,  for  Victor 
money  was  no  object,  and  Toichi  had  a  big  crew  of  people  that 
could  take  special  care  of  some  of  these  things. 

Riess:     I'm  curious  how  that  network  works,  that  trading  among 

yourselves.   You  were  just  a  kid  then,  compared  to  these  people. 

Roderick:   Yes.  A  lot  of  them  took  me  in.   One  thing  I  always  said,  "I'm 
so  stupid  that  I  can't  lie."   If  I  don't  know  something,  I  tell 
people  so.   If  I  don't  believe  that  that's  the  correct  way,  I'll 
say,  "No,  I  do  it  this  way."   I'm  trying  to  learn  still,  and  if 
you  lie,  people  can  feel  this,  and  they're  not  going  to  tell 
you. 

Riess:  You  mean  by  lying,  pretending  that  you  know  something  when  you 
really  don't  know  it? 

Roderick:   Yes.   I  think  this  is  why  I  got  on  so  well  in  England.   I've 
been  told  by  a  lot  of  my  friends,  "Oh,  no.   That  garden's  not 
good  enough  for  you  to  see" --these  big,  you  know,  two  hundred- 
acre  gardens .   [ laughs ] 

Riess:     Domoto  also  raised  bonsai? 

Roderick:   You  should  have  seen  the  bonsais  before  the  war.   Lots  of  those 
were  killed  by  complete  neglect.   That  first  time  I  was  there 
with  Mr.  Von  Graf en  from  the  nursery  in  Santa  Rosa,  Von  Graf en 
Nursery.   It  was  one  of  the  big,  old  nurseries,  now  the  Flamingo 
Hotel  in  Santa  Rosa. 


28 


Some  gentleman  was  there  that  was  very  elderly  and  dressed 
about  like  what  Victor  Reiter  dressed  like  in  later  years:   old, 
worn-out  suit,  and  shoes  that  should  have  been  thrown  away. 
Toichi  had  the  family  tree  out  there,  this  Hinoki  cypress,  the 
most  gorgeous  thing.   The  container  was  about  four  or  five  feet 
long  by  about  three  foot  wide ,  the  trunk  about  ten  inches  in 
diameter,  and  the  whole  tree  about  six  foot  tall.   The  most 
gorgeous  thing. 

This  fellow  was  just  coming  to  the  car.   Toichi  was  with 
him.   The  guy  was  leaving,  and  Mr.  Von  Graf en  got  out  and 
introduced  me.   You  could  see  there  was  something  wrong  with 
Toichi.   He  was  very  upset.   He  said,  "That  man,  I  think  he's 
going  to  take  my  bonsai --my  family  tree.   He  offered  me" --I've 
forgotten  what  it  was  in  those  days  it  was  fantastic,  something 
like  $7,000.   But  there  was  also  another  one  he  knew  about,  and 
if  he  could  settle  on  that  other  one,  then  he  wanted  both  of 
them.   Otherwise  he  didn't  want  either  one.   Toichi  wouldn't 
leave  the  office  area.   The  guy  said  he  was  only  a  short  ways 
away,  and  he'd  call  within  an  hour's  time. 

Finally  the  fellow  called,  and  he  couldn't  get  the  other 
one,  so  he  didn't  want  Toichi' s.   You  never  saw  such  a  relieved 
person  in  your  life.   The  second  time,  a  few  months  later,  that 
I  went  down  with  Mr.  Von  Graf en,  he  [Domoto]  had  planted  the 
family  tree  out  in  front  of  the  house.   He  couldn't  sell  it 
then.   [laughter] 


Protecting  Stock,  in  the  Nursery  and  in  the  Wild 


Riess:     Does  this  frequently  happen  around  nurseries,  that  you  get  a 

splendid  specimen  that  you're  very  reluctant  to  let  just  anyone 
have? 

Roderick:   I  had  a  telephone  call  Saturday  morning  from  a  big  wholesale 

nursery  down  in  Watsonville  by  the  name  of  Wintergreen- -one  of 
the  top  wholesale  nurseries,  small,  but  quality,  quality.   There 
was  a  group- -the  owner  was  gone  and  his  salesman  was  there  to 
take  the  group  around.   These  two  women  wanted  only  to  buy  his 
stock  plants.   They  got  into  a  screaming  mess  there,  that  they 
wanted  to  have  those,  or  they  were  going  to  raise  hell.    He 
told  me,  he  said  if  he  had  been  there  he  would  have  thrown  the 
women  out. 


29 


We  all  have  plants  that  you  don't  sell,  especially  your 
stock  plants.   The  way  that  Wintergreen  works  up  their  stock 
plants,  I  can  see  why  he  would  have  really  thrown  the  women  out, 
because  he's  propagating  a  lot  of  our  wild  shrubs.*  He  finds 
cuttings  of  a  plant  he  thinks  is  fine,  brings  them  home,  makes 
his  cuttings,  soaks  them  in  fungicides  for  a  couple  of  hours, 
puts  his  cuttings  in  for  rooting,  keeps  working  fungicide  in 
with  them,  pots  them  up,  keeps  up  the  fungicide.   When  those 
plants  get  big  enough  to  take  cuttings  off  of  them,  again  same 
process  over. 

He  does  that  four  times  before  he  ever  takes  one  cutting  to 
think  about  selling.   Working  the  fungus  out  of  them.   Then,  he 
never  plants  those  in  the  ground  at  all.   They're  kept  in 
containers  to  keep  them  free  from  fungus ,  which  means  much 
easier  propagating.   You  work  several  years  before  you  ever  get 
a  plant  that  you  can  start  to  think  about  selling.   You  don't 
want  to  get  rid  of  those. 

Riess:     Those  women  shouldn't  have  been  allowed  to  see  them. 

Roderick:   I  can  remember  once,  way  back  when  we  first  had  the  nursery,  I 
had  a  strain  of  polyanthus  primroses  that  was  almost  as  good  as 
Vetterle  and  Reinelt's.   I  was  working  on  it,  and  I  finally  got 
a  double -flowered  one.   A  poor,  miserable  color,  but  I  knew  it 
was  one  that  I  could  take  and  pollinate  the  flower  and  maybe 
work  up  to  double  ones  with  good  color.   I  had  bragged  about 
this.   I  had  a  group  of  people  through  the  garden.   My  mother 
had—we  still  kept  the  acre  garden  up.   She  took  people  down  and 
showed  them  this.   Went  back  a  few  days  later  to  start 
pollinating,  and  somebody  had  dug  the  plant.   Lost  the  whole 
thing. 

Riess:     That  would  be  one  reason  you'd  want  to  get  out  of  the  business. 

Roderick:   And  one  of  the  reasons  why  you  don't  really  let  anybody  get 
around  your  propagating  stock. 

Riess:     Yes.   The  enthusiasm  about  plants,  which  you  think  is  a  shared 
enthusiasm,  that  enthusiasm,  I  understand,  also  verges  on  mania. 

Roderick:   I  took  a  group  of  the  conservationists  of  the  Native  Plant 

Society  up  to  Siskiyou  County  up  in  the  Siskiyou  Mountains,  and 
all  three  species  of  our  lady's  slippers  grow  in  that  area. 
They  wanted  to  see  the  Cypripedium  montanum.  and  I  showed  one 
clump  with  about  forty  flowers  on  it- -miserable  specimen;  it  was 
a  very  poor  flower  form,  but  it  was  still  a  Cypripedium 
montanum.   I  went  back,  and  the  plant  was  dug,  gone.   These  were 


30 


conservationists!   So,  now  with  such  things  as  that,  I  do  not 
show  anybody  or  tell  them  where  these  things  are. 

Riess:     It  certainly  is  an  issue.   You  had  an  article  recently  in  the 

Bulletin  of  the  American  Rock  Garden  Society  [Vol.  48,  No.  1]  on 
a  wildf lower  trip  through  California.   You  admonished  people 
just  to  observe.   But  what  can  you  do?   Can  you  trust  them? 

Roderick:   Well,  I  have  one  thing  I  trust- -the  Dutch  bulb  growers.   They 
want  to  have  three  bulbs  of  any  one  of  our  native  plants  that 
they  possibly  can,  and  ten  at  the  most.   If  they  can't  do 
anything  with  that  many,  there's  no  sense  in  going  on  any 
farther.   I'm  all  for  doing  that,  instead  of  seeing  these 
persons  going  out  and  digging  like  mad  everything  they  can  see. 
In  Holland  they're  just  unbelievable,  what  they're  doing  with 
some  of  our  natives . 

Riess:     That's  where  they'll  be  propagated,  back  there? 

Roderick:   Several  of  our  natives  are  going  to  be  sold  into  horticulture 
this  year  from  this  one  grower  that's  so  great. 

Riess:     And  you  will  have  been  the  conduit. 

Roderick:   Yes.   I  feel  very  proud  about  that,  because  I  know  how  many 
plants  that  a  person's  dug,  and  there  was  a  couple  of  times 
there  where  things  were  very  plentiful  and  he  got  a  little 
greedy.   He  knew  when  I  told  him  off,  too. 

Riess:      [laughing]  I  have  a  feeling  that  this  conversation  has  more 
subtleties  than  I'm  aware  of. 


What  was  the  name  you  referred  to  earlier? 
Reinelt? 


Vetterle  and 


Roderick:   One  was  French  and  the  other  one  was  Bohemian.   They  both  had 

little  funny  ways.   Frank  Reinelt  was  the  last  one  of  the  group 
They  are  the  ones  that  produced  the  tuberous  root  begonia,  the 
polyanthus  primroses  that  you  still  see  on  the  market,  and 
delphiniums.   I  can't  tell  you  too  much  about  those. 

I  can  remember  my  mother  telling  when  she  was  first 
married,  or  just  before  she  was  married,  up  in  Eureka  is  where 
the  first  tuberous  root  begonias  were  grown.   Then  it  was  sold 
to  Vetterle,  I  believe,  and  moved  to  Santa  Cruz.   Then  they 
worked  and  developed  the  tuberous  root  begonias  there.   Then  I 
think  it  was  Reinelt  that  went  on  and  developed  the  delphiniums 
and  the  primroses  to  such  perfection. 


31 


Finally,  Frank  Reinelt  kept  the  nursery  going  just  to  keep 
his  employees  so  they  could  make  a  living,  even  if  his  health 
was  so  bad  that  he  desperately  wanted  to  get  out  of  there.   But 
to  play  he  grew- -first  it  was  succulents,  hybridizing  them,  and 
then  finally  he  went  to  cactus,  getting  beautiful  spine  cactus 
which  have  always  miserable  flowers,  and  poor  spine  ones  that 
have  beautiful  flowers,  and  hybridizing  those.   Then,  he  finally 
died. 


Sunset  Western  Garden  Book- -An  Opinion 


Riess:  For  general  knowledge  about  gardens  and  plant  names  and  flower 
names,  so  many  people  use  the  Sunset  Western  Garden  Book. 

Roderick:   Everyone  uses  it,  and  there  are  still  a  lot  of  horrible 
mistakes.   I  know  who  was  the  editor. 

Riess:  I  wonder  if  you  remember  when  that  first  came  out,  and  whether 
that  was  probably  the  first  thing  that  people  were  able  to  lay 
their  hands  on? 

Roderick:   I  think  it  was  the  first  popular  thing  for  the  complete  amateur, 
and  it  was  very  good.   It  had  lots  and  lots  of  good  ideas. 

They  did  have  lots  of  mistakes  in  it.   The  second  issue--! 
helped  out  on  that- -they  still  put  in  mistakes  that  shouldn't 
have  got  in  there.   This  next  one  that  came  out  still  had  some, 
and  the  last  time,  which  is  the  new  one,  they  took  my  name  out 
because  I  raised  so  much  hell  with  their  books. 

I  used  to  get  a  lot  of  their  new  gardening  books,  and  the 
last  one  was  on  hanging  containers.   I  started  out,  I  think  on 
the  cover,  with  red  ink.   There  was  hardly  a  page  that  I  did  not 
red  ink. 


Riess:     What's  the  nature  of  the  mistakes? 
Roderick:   Well,  I  can't  remember  too  much  on  that. 

Riess:     I  mean,  are  these  little  details,  or  are  these  things  that  would 
totally  foil  you  if  you  were  trying  do  it  yourself? 

Roderick:   Some  of  the  containers,  on  this  one  on  hanging  containers,  would 
hold  two  or  three  hundred  pounds  of  soil  for  the  size  of  the 
container.   Now,  you  don't  hang  those  from  a  ceiling  or  hang 
them  on  the  limb  of  a  tree. 


32 


But  the  one  picture  I  raised  so  much  hell  about,  and  they 
didn't  take  out,  it  shows  a  picture  of  this  beautiful  grand 
piano  in  this  alcove  with  three  hanging  containers  over  the 
grand  piano.   Now,  what  would  happen  if  one  of  those  should 
fall,  or  they  got  too  much  water.   I  thought  that  was  absolutely 
hideous  bad  taste.   I  raised  hell  about  this.   That  last  one 
that  I  raised  so  much  hell  about,  they  gave  me  double  pay  and  no 
more  books  from  then  on.   [laughter] 

Riess:     So,  that's  sort  of  a  conceptual  blooper.   But  in  the  Western 
Garden  Book  do  they  get  their  botanical  information  wrong,  or 
what? 

Roderick:   It's  been  so  many  years  now  since  I've  done  anything  on  that. 
They  said,  for  instance,  Ceanothus  *  Julia  Phelps'  grew  to 
fifteen  feet.   Well,  you  know,  I  never  see  any  over  about  seven, 
eight  feet.   It's  one  of  the  smaller  growers.   You  know,  it 
would  be  things  like  this  here.   And  yes,  it  would  take  heavy 
clay,  but  it  won't  grow  anymore  than  something  like  that.   I 
can't  remember  enough,  to  be  honest  with  you,  but  it  had  a  lot 
of  mistakes,  and  if  people  would  plant  these  things,  and  the 
plant  would  hurry  up  and  die,  then  the  people  would  get 
disgusted. 


Working  with  Landscape  Architects 


Riess:     You  became  aware  of  it  as  a  nurseryman  because  you  saw  people 

come  in  with  this  book  as  their  authority,  and  they  weren't  able 
to  get  the  results  that  they  expected? 

Roderick:   Well,  I  always  tried  to  give  instructions.   Again,  that  was 

another  thing.   We  got  landscape  architects'  drawings.   We  got 
to  know  certain  landscape  architects,  that  if  this  is  what  you 
want  in  the  line  of  plants,  you  have  got  to  have  this,  we  don't 
want  nothing  to  do  with  this.   You  better  take  it  someplace 
else. 

One  of  the  worst  ones  of  all  was  Tommy  [Thomas  Dolliver] 
Church.   Tommy  Church  did  beautiful  plans,  but  he  didn't  know 
his  plant  material.   I  never  met  him.   I  saw  quite  a  few  of  his 
.plans.   The  last  person  I  dealt  with,  I  told  [her]  that  was  the 
most  horrible,  hideous  mess  I  had  ever  seen  in  my  life.   For  the 
plants  right  around  your  front  door,  you  want  something  that's 
going  to  look  nice  the  year  around.   You  can't  believe  the 


33 


Riess: 


horrible  plants  that  he  put  in  there.   They  were  going  to  look 
horrible  for  six  months  out  of  the  year. 

Now  Dewey  Donnell,  there  at  the  head  of  Sonoma  Valley- - 
that's  gorgeous.   It's  so  simple  a  thing  that  you  couldn't  go 
wrong,  and  the  plant  material  blends  in  well.   That's  the  only 
place  I've  ever  seen  of  Tommy  Church's  that  is  good. 

Maybe  that's  because  Halprin  worked  with  him  on  that  one. 
That's  done  jointly. 


Roderick:   I  don't  know  about  that.   But  I  think  that's  a  beautiful  garden. 

This  one  lady  that  we  were  working  with- -I  can't  remember 
who  the  landscape  architect  was --she  had  a  lot  of  shade.   It  was 
an  old,  old  estate,  and  her  husband  and  her  had  just  bought  the 
place,  and  she  was  having  it  done  over.   It  was  going  to  be 
about  two  acres  of  garden.   She  told  the  landscape  architect 
that  they  needed  lots  of  space  for  camellias  because  "I  love 
camellias.   I  want  lots  of  shrubs,  flowering  shrubs,  because" -- 
she  was  a  ballet  teacher  and  her  husband  was  an  attorney,  in 
fact  he  was  the  city  attorney  for  Petaluma- - "we  do  lots  of 
entertaining,  and  I  want  lots  of  things  I  can  cut  to  bring  into 
the  house . " 

She  had  all  this  shade,  and  he  left  her  space  for  three 
camellias!   But  at  the  nursery  we  had  about  fifteen,  twenty 
camellias  that  the  family  had  been  buying  for  her  as  gifts.   The 
shrubs  that  the  fellow  put  in  were  pyracanthus ,  cotoneasters , 
and  I  can't  remember  what  the  other  thing  was.   No  heathers, 
nothing  that  would  give  color  in  the  wintertime,  nothing  that 
would  give  color  during  the  summer. 

We  suggested  a  lot  of  the  low-maintenance  perennials,  not 
drought -tolerant,  but  low-maintenance,  like  Shasta  daisies--a 
little  bit  of  water  and  they'll  work  wonders.   He  didn't  do 
anything  except  cotoneasters  and  pyracanthus,  and  there  was  one 
other  shrub.   I  can't  remember  what  the  third  one  was. 

Riess:     That's  cruel.   As  the  business  grew,  and  particularly  post-war, 
were  you  working  with  landscape  architects  or  landscape 
designers  more?  And  did  they  become  better- informed  as  the 
years  went  by?  How  has  that  changed. 

Roderick:   I  think  with  landscape  architects  it  has  not  changed  too  much. 
I  think  these  landscape  designers  who  have  been  gardeners  and 
then  graduated,  I  think  they  know  more  than  so  many  of  the 
landscape  architects.   Jonathan  Plant  is  well- trained.   Of 
course,  Ron  Lutsko  is  tops.   Ernest  Wertheim,  one  of  the  old- 


34 


timers  in  San  Francisco,  knows  his  plant  material, 
quite  a  few  like  this  around. 


There's 


But  so  many  of  the  landscape  architects  know  what  the  shape 
of  a  plant  is,  the  type  of  foliage,  blending  foliage  together, 
but  they  could  care  less  if  it's  the  right  soils  or  what.   They 
don't  know  the  difference.   They  have  no  idea.   I  know  of  one 
landscape  architect  that  is  color  blind.   I've  never  seen  such  a 
horrible  mess  as  in  some  of  his  gardens. 

Riess:     In  Petaluma,  were  you  working  with  —  you  said  you  didn't  know 
Tommy  Church  up  there? 

Roderick:   No.   Very  few  of  the  landscape  architects  that  I  know--.   The 

couple  that  I  did,  I  used  to  tell  them  off.   [laughs]   This  one 
fellow  would  ask,  "What  do  you  think  of  this?"   I  didn't  see  him 
but  once  in  a  great  while,  but  it  was  in  my  area,  and  if  he 
thought  that  the  people  were  going  to  come  to  me  he'd  ask  me. 
And  I'd  tell  him.   He  did—mostly  they  were  smaller  gardens,  and 
he  did  quite  nice  for  them. 

Most  of  the  landscape  architects  do  have  a  good  eye  for 
design,  but  there's  very  few  of  them  that  know  their  plant 
material  well  enough.   I  think  there's  something  like  two 
hundred  and  fifty  plants  that  they  have  to  know  to  graduate  out 
of  college.   Ron  Lutsko  now  is  just  finishing  up  his  thesis  for 
his  master's  degree,  so  he  can  really  teach  now  at  UC.   They 
want  him.   They  want  him  bad.   But  if  he  didn't  have  his 
master's,  the  pay  was  so  small  that  he  didn't  dare  to  take  the 
time.   He  loves  teaching.   He  loves  to  get  over  to  his  students 
the  idea  of  decent  plant  material  growing  under  good  soil 
conditions. 


Garden  Snobs  and  the  Garden  Conservancy//// 


Roderick:   When  Victor  Reiter's  father  died,  his  mother  inherited  most  of 
the  estate.   Victor  sold  off  the  stocks  and  bonds  that  he 
inherited  to  save  the  property  that  he  inherited,  and  he  still 
had  $600,000  left,  he  told  me.   Then  he  started  to  really  work 
in  his  stocks  and  bonds,  and  that's  when  he  got  out  of  the 
nursery  business.   Each  kid- -he  had  three  children—each  one 
-when  they  were  married  was  given  a  home  as  a  wedding  gift,  and  I 
believe  a  million  dollars  set  aside  for  them. 

He  wore  these  old,  lousy  clothes  to  Cal  Hort  meetings. 
Some  woman  who  saw  this  old  gentleman  there,  and  thought  he  must 


35 


Riess: 


Riess: 


Roderick: 


be  so  poor,  she  asked  if  California  Horticultural  Society  could 
buy  him  at  least  a  new  pair  of  shoes  so  he'd  have  some  decent 
clothes  to  wear.   That's  the  kind  of  a  character  that  he  was. 
[laughing] 

I  think  the  plant  world  is  full  of  characters. 


Roderick:   Oh  yes. 

Riess:     How  about  Anita  Blake?   Do  you  think  of  her  as  a  character? 

Roderick:   Yes.   Anita  Blake.   The  thing  I  keep  thinking  about  her- -I 
didn't  hardly  ever  know  her,  but  she  used  to  give  these 
lectures,  and  finally  she  said,  "You  know,  I  got  plants  from 
many  sources,"  and  she'd  get  to  giggling, 
from  so-and-so,  I  got  some  from  so-and-so 


She  said,  "I  got  some 
and  I  got  some 


through  the  government  experiment  station,  and  I  got  some  of 
them  legally."   [laughter] 

Then  the  other  character--!  never  met  her,  I  only  saw  her 
from  a  distance-- that  was  Madame  Ganna  Walska.   She  always  used 
her  professional  name.    She  had  a  forty-acre  garden  [Lotusland] 
down  in  the  Santa  Barbara  area.   She  married,  I  think  it  was 
McCormick.   They  lived  in  Chicago.   He  built  an  opera  house  for 
her,  and  she  was  the  first  to  perform  in  the  new  opera  house. 
Her  voice  was  so  bad  that  everybody  got  up  and  walked  out.   So 
they  closed  the  opera.   It  was  just  recently  the  opera  house  has 
been  opened  up,  I  understand. 

But  they  would  not  do  anything  with  any  of  society  in 
Chicago,  and  they  finally  moved--!  guess  maybe  he  died,  and  she 
moved  up  there  to  Santa  Barbara  and  built  this  great  garden. 
Some  horrible,  bad  taste  from  what  I've  seen.   She's  supposed  to 
have  left  several  million  dollars  to  keep  the  garden  going.   Oh, 
we've  got  plenty  of  characters  around! 

[referring  to  discussion  off  tape]   You  were  describing  the 
Orchid  Society.   They  used  to  meet  at  the  Claremont  Hotel  when 
they  first  organized,  you  said? 

They  had  met  there  for  awhile.   Finally,  about  the  second  or 
third  time,  I  had  to  say  who  I  was,  from  where.   I  got  up  and 
said,  "Wayne  Roderick  from  Petaluma,"  and  some  woman  right 
alongside  said,  "Huh!   Farmers  coming  in!"  About  three  or  four 
years  passed--!  still  went  back  at  times- -and  finally  I  got 
cymbidiums  to  bloom.   I  took  this  one  plant  down.   It  was  in  a 
ten- inch  pot  and  had  sixteen  flower  spikes  on  it- -an  old- 
fashioned  thing  that  everybody  throws  away  now.   And  they  wanted 


36 


to  know  how  I  grew  it.   From  then  on  I  was  known,  because  nobody 
had  more  than  one  or  two  flower  spikes  to  a  pot. 

We  were  using  sawdust  and  shavings,  and  a  cheap  sprinkler 
set  up  in  the  middle  of  the  place  where  I  had  them  outside  in 
the  summertime- -I  think  it  was  about  a  two-dollar,  two-and-a- 
half  dollar  sprinkler  instead  of  a  fifty-dollar  one.   And  they 
shook  their  heads:   "But  you  don't  mean  you're  using  just 
regular  shavings?"   "Yes.   Just  whatever  we  get  from  the 
sawmill."   It  wasn't  fir  bark,  special  ground,  and  all  this  kind 
of  thing.   This  was  before  fir  bark,  really.    But  they  just 
shook  there  heads  and  couldn't  believe  it.   From  then  on  they 
didn't  call  me  a  farmer  anymore. 

Riess:     Was  Rod  McLellan  at  that  point  the  premier  orchid  person? 

Roderick:   Rod  McLellan  was  just  starting  in  on  cymbidiums- -no,  it's  a 

little  bit  later  on  than  that.   A  few  years  later,  some  friends 
of  mine,  we  started  trading  with  and  getting  some  fairly  good 
cyrabidium,  and  they  were  all  superior  to  what  the  McLellans  had. 
So  they  said,  "What  about  making  some  trades?"   I  said,  "Sure, 
I'll  bring  down  flowers  that  you  can  get  pollen  from."   In  the 
meantime  the  McLellans  had  spent  a  heck  of  a  lot  of  money  and 
got  all  the  finest  plants  from  Europe.   And  he  come  out,  and  he 
took  one  look,  and  he  said,  "Trash."  Turned  around  and  walked 
back.   So,  I  took  all  my  flowers  home. 

Riess:     Really? 

Roderick:   Yes.   Well,  they  had  gotten  hold  of  some  beautiful- -the  best 
stock  they  could  get. 

Riess:     But  why  did  they  say  "trash"? 

Roderick:   Well,  mine  were  just  these  little  old-fashioned  things,  and  they 
didn't  want  them  anymore.   They  were  going  into  it  in  a  big  way. 

He  [McLellen]  was  always  very  fancy- -had  to  have  a  bow  tie 
on  all  the  time  and  had  to  have  his  little  cookie-duster 
moustache  trimmed,  I  guess,  by  a  professional  every  day.   He  was 
pretty  fancy. 

Riess:     It  sounds  like  we  could  write  a  book  about  snobs  and  eccentrics 
in  the  flower  business. 

Roderick:   Oh,  yes.   You  know,  at  UC  I  got  into  everything  I  could,  and  I 

got  into  the  early  plant  explorers  of  the  West.   And  if  you  want 
to  get  into  some  really  crazy  ones,  it's  them.   There  were  some 
real,  real  strange  ones.   For  instance  the  California  poppy.   It 


37 


was  found  by  a  French  botanist,  named  for  a  German  doctor  friend 
while  they  were  working  for  Russians  in  Spanish  territory,  and 
published  in  an  English  publication,  as  well  as  in  a  German. 

Riess:     That's  Eschscholzia. 

Roderick:   Eschscholzia  was  Dr.  [J.  Friedrich]  Eschscholz.   It  was 

Chamisso-- afterwards  he  become  a  German  citizen,  [Adelbert]  Von 
Chamisso,  and  in  Germany  to  this  day  he's  still  considered  the 
greatest  love  poet  that's  ever  been  born,  he's  the  man  that 
wrote  the  book,  The  Man  Without  a  Shadow.   The  love  poems  were 
written  to  Eschscholz  the  second  time  that  Eschscholz  came  back 
to  California.   But  still  he  was  married  and  had  fourteen  kids. 
Call  that  whatever  you  want! 

[Interview  2:  May  24,  1990 ]## 

Riess:     You  are  working  with  the  Garden  Conservancy?   I  see  that  the 
first  garden  under  their  care  is  Ruth  Bancroft's,  in  Walnut 
Creek. 

Roderick:   There's  a  whole  group  of  us  working  with  Ruth  Bancroft  to  get 
everything  straightened  out  as  to  exactly  what  property  and 
everything  that  she  will  give.   And  her  children  just  think  it's 
the  greatest  thing  to  ever  happen.   They're  all  for  it. 

But  down  at  Santa  Barbara  is  Lotusland,  Madame  Ganna 
Walska's  garden,  and  the  neighbors  are  all  complaining  about 
having  it  open  to  the  public,  and  the  estate  doesn't  want  to 
bother  having  it  open  to  the  public.   So  the  Garden  Conservancy 
is  trying  to  get  this  straightened  out  with  the  neighbors  and  so 
forth  to  go  on  and  open  it  up. 

Riess:     There  must  be  legal  language  and  precedent  that  you  can  take 
from  groups  like  Nature  Conservancy  and  get  their  help. 

Roderick:   Tides  Foundation  is  our  legal  side  and  financial  side.   We  had  a 
meeting  with  the  Tides  Foundation  attorneys  and  Ruth  Bancroft's 
attorneys,  and  our  group  that's  trying  to  get  everything 
straightened  out.   You  never  saw  nicer  things  that  the  attorneys 
had  to  keep  saying  and  how  they  all  worked  together.   Ruth's  old 
attorney  came  along,  and  he's  in  his  late  eighties  and  he's  not 
very  competent  anymore.   Finally  it  came  out  that  the  group  that 
is  working  with  Ruth  is  more  for  Ruth  than  they  are  for  the 
Conservancy  in  protecting  the  family.   It  was  interesting. 
After  it  was  all  over,  that's  the  way  it  figured  out. 

Riess:     That  will  be  good  when  you're  trying  to  explain  this  proposition 
to  future  garden- givers . 


38 


Roderick:   All  of  this  is  being  carefully  watched  and  thought  about  because 
it's  something  so  new.   There  are  several  places,  like  up  in 
Portland  is  the  Berry  Estate,  which  is  now  the  Berry  Botanic 
Garden,  but  they  can't  hardly  have  it  open—again,  because  of 
the  neighbors.   So,  these  are  some  of  the  things  that  we  want  to 
work  on. 

Generally  speaking,  people  going  to  a  botanic  garden  are 
not  the  kind  of  people  that  are  going  to  cause  problems  in  the 
area  or  in  the  botanic  garden  itself.   You  get  a  better  quality 
people  that  go  to  these  places.   The  undesirable  would  rather 
head  for  a  bar  or  something  that  way. 

Riess:     In  fact  you  would  think  it  would  increase  values  in  the 
neighborhood  rather  than  alarm  the  neighbors. 

Roderick:   I've  never  been  to  Lotusland.   I've  met  Madame  Ganna  Walska  in 
years  back.   That's  all  you  can  say,  [laughs]  met  her  and  got 
the  heck  out,  because  she  was  such  a  wild  one! 


Wayne  Roderick,  Mendocino  Coast,  1965 


39 


III   UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  BOTANICAL  GARDEN,  1960-1976 


Job  Possibilities  for  Roderick.  1960 


Riess :     Now  we  should  plunge  right  into  your  work  at  the  UC  Botanical 
Gardens.   And  that  is  "botanical,"  not  "botanic,"  isn't  it? 

Roderick:  Yes.  They  have  that  two-letter  ending  there  that  I  can't  quite 
see  what  difference  it  makes,  but  it  is  important  somewhere.  I 
always  have  said  "botanic,"  but  UC  is  "botanical." 

Riess:     Tell  me  about  how  you  were  hired. 

Roderick:   That  goes  back  in  history  again.   We  had  the  nursery  up  in 
Petaluma.   We  kept  it.   My  father  would  say,  "Oh,  yes  we're 
going  to  move  into  town  and  work  this  out."  And  I  said,  "No, 
let's  keep  it  down  low."   It  was  more  than  what  we  could  really 
keep  up,  and  we  were  trying  not  to  hire  help,  too. 

Then  my  father  died  and  a  lot  of  things  had  to  be  settled 
out.   At  the  same  time  the  chicken  industry  had  gone  to  pot, 
and  we  were  in  the  country,  and  our  main  customers  were  farmers, 
and  they  couldn't  afford  anything  that  was  luxury.   Of  course, 
plants  were  something  they  could  get  along  without. 

It  got  down  to- -we  only  did  about  three  hundred  dollars  in 
one  month  in  the  wintertime,  and  that  was  not  easy,  to  try  to 
make  a  living  on  that  kind  of  little  bit  of  money.   Plus, 
ornamental  plants  are  not  very  good  boiled  for  dinner.   I  knew 
there  were  a  couple  of  openings  at  Davis.   So  I  went  over  there 
and  talked  around. 

Riess:     What  kind  of  openings? 

Roderick:   One  was  a  big  research  plot  for  working  with  all  kinds  of  things 
about  shade  trees- -disease -res is tance ,  not  too  large  growers, 
every  description  of  a  tree  you  could  think  of,  flat- land,  wind- 
blowing,  hot.   The  other  job  I  can't  quite  remember,  but  it  was 


40 


just  as  dull  a  work- -more  or  less  doing  the  plowing  in  between 
the  trees  and  plants.  And  yes,  they  would  hire  me  there  right 
away. 

f 
I  got  to  thinking  about  this.   The  next  week  I  said,  "I'm 

going  down  to  UC  Berkeley."   I  went  to  the  garden.   It  turned 
out  that  there  was  an  opening.   And  here  I  was,  the  most  dirty, 
filthiest  guy,  because  I  decided  to  do  it  just  on  the  spur  of 
the  moment.   Didn't  even  shave  or  anything.   Got  down  there, 
found  out  there  was  this  very  interesting  little  native  area. 

Riess:     How  did  they  describe  the  job  to  you? 

Roderick:   I  don't  remember  exactly.   It  had  been  listed  already.   Anyhow, 
I  went  down  to  Personnel,  and  I  went  to  the  head  of  Personnel  in 
these  dirty  clothes.   Here  were  two  or  three  men  in  beautiful 
suits  and  ties  and  everything  else.   I  had  over  an  hour 
interview,  and  something  came  up,  the  fellow  was  talking  on  the 
intercom:   "Yes,  I'll  be  through  with  Mr.  Roderick  in  about 
twenty  minutes.   And  so-and-so,"  which  was  this  one  fellow  who 
was  still  out  there,  "I  can  get  rid  of  him  in  ten  minutes. 
Then,  I'll  be  there."   I  felt  like  a  damn  fool  for  sure!   I  got 
two  raises  when  I  was  accepted. 

Riess:     Was  it  listed  as  "gardener,"  or  what? 

Roderick:   No.   It  was  called  "senior  nurseryman."  They  had  very,  very  few 
positions.   There  was  a  gardener,  and  senior  nurseryman,  and  I 
think  that  was  it.   Then  assistant  manager  and  manager  and 
director. 


"Continuing  Education" 


Roderick:   I  got,  in  nothing  flat,  to  the  top  of  my  category,  and  I 

couldn't  get  any  more  raises.   It  went  on  for  nine  years  that 
way.   The  laws  or  the  rules  of  the  University  said  that  if  you 
are  not  promoted  in  I  think  it  was  six  years  when  you  got  to  the 
top  of  your  field,  that  you  were  no  good,  and  that  you  had  to  be 
fired.   I  got  an  interview  and  then  I  became  a  "museum 
scientist."   But  the  job  description  said  that  I  had  to  have  at 
least  a  master's  degree,  and  I  don't  even  have  a  degree,  and 
that  it  should  be  a  person  with  a  Ph.D. 

At  that  time  I  also  guided  all  the  college  classes  that 
used  to  come  around  to  visit  the  garden.   I  took  them  through 
the  garden  and  lectured  them  on  the  different  plants.   When  I 


41 


Riess : 


Roderick: 


Riess : 


Roderick; 


got  this  higher  position,  I  couldn't  take  classes  around 
anymore,  and  they  hired  a  Ph.D.,  and  she  couldn't  take  the 
college  kids !   She  could  only  take  grammar  school  kids ,  which 
has  turned  out  to  be  one  of  the  greatest  things  of  all:  there's 
all  these  grammar  school  kids  coming,  and  they  have  a  tremendous 
bunch  of  docents  that  take  the  classes  around,  getting  the 
youngsters  broken  in  on  plants  early. 


Speaking  of  "taking  classes,' 
get  some  more  academic  work? 


were  you  able  to  enroll  at  UC  and 
Did  that  happen  at  all? 


No,  it  didn't.   I  thought  about  it  and  thought  about  it,  and  I 
still  couldn't  quite  get  the  classes  I  wanted  in  this  area.   I 
was  more  into  horticulture  classes.   I  would  have  to  take  them 
at  Merritt,  or  some  one  of  those  places,  and  I  was  more  or  less 
teaching  the  instructors  over  there! 

In  the  Lester  Rowntree  oral  history  I  read  that  she  didn't 
regret  her  lack  of  university  education.   "It  would  spoil 
everything,"  she  said,   "It  would  be  all  put-on,  veneer, 
pretense. "1 

I  can  tell  you  one  thing  that  I  absolutely  adored  about  her. 
She  was  telling  me  one  time--.   There  was  a  patch  of  a  Lewisia 
rediviva.  and  you  could  see  the  ocean  from  there.   Normally  they 
are  inland  where  it's  hotter  and  drier.   It  was  just  a  small 
colony.   She  went  up  to  see  it  one  spring,  and  the  highway  crew 
had  straightened  the  road  out  a  little  bit  and  took  it  out.   Her 
quote  was:  "I  said  strong  words  for  a  Quaker.   I  said  strong 
words!"   I  just  bet  she  did  say  more  than  "darn"  and  "heck"  on 
that  one!   Oh,  but  she  did  get  mad! 


Employees  and  Managers  at  the  Garden 


Riess:     When  you  arrived  on  the  job  at  the  Botanical  Garden,  who  did  you 
talk  to? 

Roderick:   The  first  person  I  talked  with  was  Dr.  [Helen-Mar]  Beard.   I  had 
had  contact  with  her  from  time  to  time  when  I  used  to  go  down 
there.   I  was  so  interested  in  the  native  plants.   Many  a  time 
we'd  get  talking  over  this,  and  I  thought,  "No,  that's  not  that, 
.that's  a  such  and  such."  And  I'd  go  in  the  book,  and  see  that 


1Lester  Rowntree.  California  Native  Plant  Woman.  Regional  Oral  History 
Office,  University  of  California,  Berkeley,  1979. 


42 


there  is  this  one  little  character  that  throws  it  into  this  and 
not  that. 

Riess:     You  mean,  in  your  nursery  work  in  Petaluma  you  were  already 
specializing  in  native  plants? 

Roderick:   Not  specializing—we  could  hardly  sell  them,  but  we  tried  to. 
But  it  went  back  to  my  high  school,  when  I  had  the  largest 
collection  of  wildflower  specimens  that  was  ever  collected  for  a 
class  project.   Every  spring  in  the  science  course  —  and  I  can't 
remember  the  name  of  that  class --you  had  to  collect  wildf lowers 
and  press  them  and  have  them  identified.   I  think  you  were 
supposed  to  have  something  like  fifty,  and  once  in  awhile 
someone  got  a  hundred,  and  I  think  I  had  about  two -hundred- and - 
fifty  species  all  together.   So,  it  goes  back. 

Riess:     When  you  were  coming  down  to  talk  to  Dr.  Beard,  it  was  out  of 
your  own  curiosity? 

Roderick:  And  to  see  what  they  had.   That  way  I  would  learn  something. 

Riess:  Who  was  she? 

Roderick:  She  was  the  botanist. 

Riess:  At  the  Botanical  Gardens? 

Roderick:  Yes. 

Riess:     In  my  readings  of  the  history  of  the  Botanical  Gardens  there  is 
a  swing  between  its  being  very  much  connected  with  the 
University  and  then  a  kind  of  swing  away.   This  seems  to  be  an 
issue. 

Roderick:   There  was  a  lot  of  controversy  in  the  University.   Way  back,  it 
was  very  important.   Then  there  was  a  period  when  there  was 
hardly  a  graduate  student  that  was  doing  anything  up  there. 
Then  there  would  be  a  whole  bunch  more  graduate  students.   Of 
course,  when  you  get  the  graduate  students  up  there  or  are 
producing  a  lot  of  class  material,  that  was  when  the  Botanical 
Garden  was  good. 

When  Reagan  became  governor,  and  he  was  cutting  everything 
he  possibly  could,  botanic  gardens  and  universities  were  getting 
heavily  cut.   I  was  laughed  at  all  the  time  because  in  my  annual 
reports  for  the  native  area  I  counted  every  individual  flower  I 
gave  out  for  class  material.   So  I  was  producing  anywhere  from 
forty  to  fifty  thousand  flowers  every  year  just  for  class 
material,  and  I  got  laughed  at.  Up  at  Davis  especially  I  was 


43 


laughed  at:  "Who  wants  to  be  bothered  with  class  material? 
That's  just  nothing." 

Well,  Reagan  cut  the  University  severely.   At  UC  Davis 
their  arboretum  was  cut  to  zero.   But  here  at  Berkeley  we  got 
cut  only  25  percent  because  we  had  all  these  masses  of  class 
material.   From  then  on,  I  was  kind  of  liked. 

Riess:     I  have  a  note  here  that  when  Mac  [Watson]  Laetsch  came  in,  in 
1969,  the  Botanical  Garden  was  going  in  the  direction  of 
relating  more  to  community  needs,  outside  UC.   Do  you  think  this 
was  seen  as  a  way  to  keep  themselves  afloat,  too? 

Roderick:   I  can't  remember  because  I  don't  have  too  much  love  for  Laetsch. 

Riess:     Let's  step  back  again.   Who  were  some  of  the  other  people  up 
there?  Herbert  G.  Baker  became  director  in  1957. 


Roderick:   He  was  there  at  the  beginning.   He  went  out  just  as  Laetsch  came 
in,  immediately  after,  I  think. 

Riess:     I  wondered  who  you  sat  down  with,  for  instance,  and  talked  about 
the  philosophy  behind  the  California  native  garden. 

Roderick:   Nobody.   I  talked  to  nobody.   Helen-Mar  Beard  gave  me  a  little 

bit,  but  even  before  my  time  there  was  quite  a  stretch  from  this 
one  fellow  till  I  took  over.   He  was  given  a  vehicle,  gas  card, 
and  told  to  go  out  and  collect.   The  University  a  very  little 
bit,  but  this  fellow  got  a  nice  all-native  nursery,  [laughs] 
Then,  he  had  to  get  out.   I  guess  they  caught  up  to  him. 

Riess:     It  was  a  scandal?  He  was  selling  on  the  side,  or  supplying? 

Roderick:   It  was  quite  a  scandal.   He  had  a  nursery  up  on  the  Russian 

River.   We  didn't  get  very  much  plant  material  here,  but  I've 
been  to  his  nursery  and  it  was  absolutely  covered  with  plants. 

Riess:     Who  was  he?   Can  we  name  his  name? 
Roderick:   Yes.   That  was  Harry  Roberts. 

Riess:     I  guess  that  is  a  kind  of  hazard  of  the  job,  the  temptation  to 
do  a  little  business  on  the  side.   Maybe  this  happens  a  lot. 

Roderick:   I  never  had  time  to  do  that  for  myself.   For  the  first  ten  years 
I  lived  there  at  Berkeley  I  owned  a  forty- five  by  forty- five 
foot  lot  with  an  old  Victorian  house  on  it.   There  was  no  space, 
and  I  was  thankful.   It  was  even  a  heck  of  a  job  cleaning  out 
the  weeds  on  what  little  bit  of  land  was  showing. 


44 


Riess:     Were  you  given  a  vehicle? 

Roderick:   No.   I  paid.   Practically  every  last  field  trip  was  on  myself. 

For  one  thing,  the  one  person  immediately  above  me  was  extremely 
jealous  because  I  had,  1  guess,  more  knowledge  on  these  things 
than  what  he  did.   He  was  foreign-born.   Somebody  from  Cal  Hort 
would  come  in  and  talk  with  me,  and  I  would  tell  them,  "Come  on 
over  here.   I've  got  a  weed  patch.   I  can  weed,  and  we  can  talk, 
and  we  don't  have  to  worry."   I'd  be  working  away.   He'd  come  up 
and  say,  "I  saw  you  talking  to  so-and-so.   I  won't  tell  on  you 
this  time,  but  you  watch  out.   You  better  not  do  that  anymore." 

Plus,  the  boss  himself  was  such  a  miserable  person.   His 
common  thing  for  the  garden  was:  "If  there's  anything  I  hate, 
it's  plants.   I'm  staying  here  till  I  can  retire,  and  I'll  never 
come  back  to  this  horrible  hell-hole."  Worst  of  all,  his  orders 
were  never  direct.   You  always  had  to  try  to  figure  out  what  he 
meant.   If  he  got  mad  at  you,  he  wouldn't  speak  to  you.   There 
were  six  months  he  wouldn't  speak  to  me  because  he  said  one 
thing:  "First  things  first:  weeds."   It  meant  that  I  was  not  to 
collect  any  more  plants  until  I  got  the  weeds  under  control.   I 
didn't  know  what  he  meant.   I  just  went  out  and  weeded  faster. 
But  then  he  wouldn't  speak  to  me  for  six  months  because  I  did 
bring  in  a  couple  of  plants  the  next  weekend. 

Riess:     That's  really  hard  to  work  that  way. 

Roderick:   Yes.   It  was  terrible.   Baker  was  not  a  very  good  person.   He 

was  pretty  difficult  to  work  under.   And  then  there  was  this  one 
other  botanist  by  the  name  of  Paul  [C.]  Hutchison  who  was 
impossible.   Helen-Mar  Beard- -well,  her  husband  said  that  Helen- 
Mar  thinks  in  low- gear  and  jitters  in  high- gear.   I  was  always 
on  the  run  all  the  time  and  couldn't  get  her  to  do  things  that 
should  be  done.   I'd  go  in  and  fill  out  the  final  papers, 
something  that  way,  to  get  the  numbers- -every  plant  had  to  have 
a  number- -so  I  could  plant  it  out.   She  got  so  she'd  hide  the 
papers  or  lock  them  up  so  I  couldn't  get  to  them.   Oh,  it  was 
difficult. 

Riess:     Do  you  think  it  was  because  the  Botanical  Gardens  lacked  serious 
University  support? 

Roderick:   That  was  a  lot  of  it.   Then,  the  other  thing  was  that  about  80 
percent,  if  not  better  than  that,  of  the  staff  was  only 
interested  in  their  paycheck.   They  weren't  interested  in  the 
garden  and  in  the  plants.   Now  it's  just  about  the  opposite. 
Everybody's  interested.   I  think  one  fellow  is  going  to  leave 
because  he  doesn't  like  the  place  here.  He  was  born  and  raised 


45 


in  Oregon,  and  that's  where  he  wants  to  go.   So  right  now  it's  a 
good  job.   I  think  as  soon  as  he  can  he's  going  to  move  back  to 
Oregon,  if  he  can  get  something  up  there  he  likes. 


Weeding  and  Collecting  Class  Material 


Riess:     If  you  were  set  to  weeding  —  I'm  just  kind  of  curious  about  all 
of  these  ranking  orders --what  did  the  gardeners  do?  You  said 
you  were  a  "senior  nurseryman,"  and  there  were  "gardeners"  also. 
What  were  they  doing? 

Roderick:   There  were  only  a  couple.   Mostly,  it  was  "senior  nurseryman." 
Riess:     And  yet,  you  were  put  to  work  weeding? 

Roderick:   That  was  my  favorite  thing,  weeding.   I  still  like  it.   The 

first  thing  in  my  work  clothes  that's  worn  out  is  the  knees  from 
being  down  on  my  hands  and  knees  weeding.   You  can  see  what's 
going  on.   The  little  plants  —  you  can  really  see  if  they're 
coming  on  and  doing  well.   You  can  know  an  awful  lot  of  what's 
going  on  by  weeding.   I've  already  said  that  the  University 
Botanical  Garden  really  was  a  glorified  weed  patch.   Everything 
comes  down  to  that.   You've  got  all  this  area,  you've  got  all 
these  rare  and  choice  plants  planted  out,  and  you've  got  to  keep 
the  weeds  from  getting  around. 

Riess:     But  I  would  have  thought,  just  for  the  sake  of  argument,  that  in 
fact  the  California  native  section  wasn't  that  rare  and  choice, 
and  that  natives  and  weeds  are  practically  indistinguishable  to 
a  lot  of  people. 

Roderick:   Yes,  in  the  native  area  there  were—.   We  had  a  lot  of  different 
species  of  clarkia.   In  one  bed  they  would  be  a  weed,  and  in  the 
next  bed  they  would  be  a  desirable  plant.   This  is  where  I  had 
problems  with  the  student  help  that  I  got.   They  always  at  first 
would  think  I  was  the  most  horrible  person.   To  get  them  on  my 
side,  the  first  thing  I  would  tell  them  was  that  they  could  call 
me  "the  old  fart." 

Then  I'd  tell  them,  "Now,  you  weed  these  three  plants  out 
totally."   Then,  I'd  take  them  back  over:  "Now,  these  next  two 
.weeds  have  got  to  go."   So,  they  would  leave  the  things  that  I 
wanted.   About  this  time  they  would  get  to  laughing  with  me,  and 
they  would  say,  "How  old  are  you?"   I  always  told  them,  "Two 
years  younger  than  God."  This  is  the  way  I  kept  two  jumps  ahead 


46 


of  them.   [laughing]   It  was  a  lot  of  fun  working  with  those 
college  kids  and  trying  to  keep  just  ahead  of  them. 

Riess:     What  you've  described  so  far  is  just  maintaining  what  was  there. 

Roderick:   Oh,  I  was  out  every  weekend,  practically,  collecting  somewhere 
or  other. 

Riess:     Was  it  all  on  your  own  initiative,  or  did  you  have  to  check  it 
out  first?  Get  it  okayed? 

Roderick:   Well,  the  botany  classes  had  all  the  different  materials  they 
needed  for  class,  and  the  most  important  class  that  I  was 
associated  with  was  the  taxonomy  class,  where  they  had  to  learn 
to  identify  the  plants.   Unfortunately,  that  class  started  in 
January,  so  it  was  very  difficult  to  get  a  lot  of  material  for 
that  time. 

I'd  get  the  list  of  the  families  that  they  wanted- -some 
quite  often  with  the  genus,  they'd  want  maybe  three  different 
genera  in  one  family- -so,  when  I  was  out  I'd  watch  for  seeds 
that  would  bloom  early  or  late  in  those  families.   Plus,  I  would 
go  down  to  the  desert.   Generally  I  left  on  New  Year's  Day  to  go 
down  to  the  desert  for  a  few  days.   I  took  ice  chests  with  me, 
and  I  collected  a  lot  of  stuff  that  would  come  in  at  the  right 
time.   Some  of  these  things  froze  beautifully  and  we'd  freeze 
some  of  them  when  we  got  back. 

Riess:     Freeze  the  seeds? 

Roderick:   No,  the  flowers  for  the  classes.   Those  classes  got  up  to  about 
four  hundred,  four  hundred- and- fifty  students.   That's  how  come 
I  was  listing  so  many  hundreds  of  thousands  of  flowers  for  class 
material.   We'd  bring  those  out,  and  I  did  not  distinguish,  when 
I  put  in  my  report,  whether  it  was  wild-collected  plants,  or 
whether  it  was  ones  that  came  right  out  of  the  garden.   I 
figured  it  was  just  all  part  of  my  job.   That's  why  I  listed  so 
many. 

Riess:     Those  professors  were  totally  dependent  on  you  then? 

Roderick:   Yes.   When  I  left  the  University  and  went  to  Tilden,  the  fellow 
that  took  my  place,  a  fellow  that  I  helped  for  his  formal 
education,  any  plant  was  all  right  if  it  came  up  on  its  own,  but 
if  the  weeds  came  up,  that  was  too-  bad.   He  was  "too  good  to 
pull  a  weed."   All  that  class  material  kind  of  thing  went  down 
the  hill  to  zero  practically. 

Riess:     What  professors  do  you  remember  particularly  working  well  with? 


47 


Roderick:   Bob  Ornduff,  who  then  became  the  director.   To  me,  that  was 
absolutely  heavenly.   The  only  thing  that  differed  in  our 
thoughts  was  that  for  the  Botanical  Garden  I  had  to  think 
"little"  about  what  I  could  take  care  of.   He  could  think  "big." 
We're  still  good  friends  to  this  day. 

Riess:     When  Ornduff  would  send  you  a  list,  he  knew  that  all  those 

things  were  there,  or  he  kind  of  hoped  that  you'd  be  able  to 
find  them? 

Roderick:   He  hoped,  and  he  knew  that  I  was  going  out  and  collecting,  too. 
This  was  when  there  were  still  lots  of  wildf  lowers.   I  did  like 
I  did  with  seed  collecting:  I  never  collected  a  whole  patch. 
I'd  just  take  here  and  there  so  nobody  ever  could  see  where  I 
had  taken.   It  would  have  to  be  a  big  colony  before  I  --well,  you 
have  to  figure  four  hundred-  and-  fifty  specimens,  and  generally, 
the  smaller  flowers,  the  students  had  to  have  two.   That  would 
take  an  awful  lot.   So  it  would  have  to  be  a  very  large  patch 
before  I  would  really  touch  it. 


Riess:     You  knew  your  plants.   But  taxonomies?  How  much  further  along 

were  you  on  some  of  these  areas  than  the  students?  Did  you  have 
to  run  to  keep  ahead? 

Roderick:   I  didn't  have  T.V.   I  didn't  go  here  or  there.   I  didn't  go  to 

the  shows.   I  don't  go  to  bars-  -still  don't  go  to  bars.   At  that 
time  I  didn't  take  too  many  magazines.   I  had  my  nose  in  the 
books,  studying  this  and  studying  that,  all  the  time.   I  did 
that  on  my  own  before  we  ever  had  a  nursery. 

When  I  was  in  high  school  and  got  interested  in  this  botany 
thing,  my  folks  bought  me  [Willis  Linn]  Jepson's  Manual  fof  the 
Flowering  Plants  of  California!  .   I  have  it  right  over  here,  and 
there's  no  cover  left  on  it.   It's  in  bad  shape,  but  I  can't  get 
rid  of  it.   I  studied  and  studied,  and  when  we  had  the  nursery  I 
did  all  the  botanical  work  completely,  and  studied  and  studied 
night  after  night.   I  learned  all  this  on  my  own. 

Then,  I  had  to  go  a  little  bit  different  when  I  went  to 
work  for  the  University.   Instead  of  it  being  just  a  little  bit 
of  a  pleasure  like  before,  I  then  had  to  start  working  from  the 
pVnt  family  and  think  of  it  as  class  material.   It  made  quite  a 
little  bit  of  a  change. 

Also,  the  little  bit  of  botany--!  had  only  the  one  semester 
of,  botany  at  junior  college  before  the  war  came  along.   In  fact, 


48 


Riess: 
Roderick: 
Riess: 
Roderick: 


I  never  quite  finished;  I  was  drafted  before  I  was  finished. 
Then  I  found  out  that  my  professor  gave  a  complete  different 
accent  than  what  everybody  else  used.   I  had  to  learn  everything 
from  a  different  accent.   It's  still  confusing. 

It  was  a  lot  of  fun,  though.   My  pleasure  was  going  out  and 
seeing  plants  in  the  wild.   Then,  to  work  with  the  University-- 
I'd  still  do  it  even  if  I  didn't  get  paid.   [I  shouldn't  say 
that.]   They  did  give  me  Friday  afternoon  for  going  out  and 
doing  that.   I  did  get,  about  five  times,  a  car  to  go  out  and 
collect.   One  time- -I  was  never  so  disgusted--!  got  the  car  as 
far  as  Eureka  and  had  to  put  it  in  the  garage  and  get  it  all 
fixed  up  and  then  turn  it  right  around  and  come  back  home 
because  they  didn't  think  it  was  going  to  make  it  back  home. 

You  were  better  off  relying  on  your  own  car? 

Yes. 

Did  you  ever  bring  back  the  wrong  thing? 

I  brought  back  one  plant,  a  Compos itae  named  Iva  axillaris.  the 
greatest  stuff  for  class  material.   This  must  have  been  about 
the  late  1960s,  I'd  say.   I  think  now  they've  finally  gotten  rid 
of  the  horrible  thing.   [laughter] 


"Desk  Work"  and  the  Dawn  Redwood  Fuss 


Riess:     How  was  your  day  divided  up,  between  the  weeding  and  the  student 
work  and  just  sitting  at  a  desk? 

Roderick:   I  was  never,  hardly  ever  allowed  in  those  days  to  sit  at  a  desk. 
Riess:     Weren't  you  doing  some  publication  along  with  all  of  this? 

Roderick:   My  little  bit  of  writing  and  all  of  that  —  of  course,  I  kept 
being  told,  "No,  you  can't  write  that.   You're  not  educated. 
You  can't  write  that."   I  had  to  do  that  all  at  my  house  at 
night  or  early  morning. 

In  those  years  there  was  practically  no  work  in  the  office. 
A  very  few  minutes  a  day.   In  the  rainy  weather,  yes,  then  I  did 
a  little  bit  of  research.   But  mostly,  for  three  years,  I 
cleaned  out  the  vault  from  day  one  of  the  Botanic  Garden. 

Riess:     What  was  the  vault? 


49 


Roderick:   It  was  a  vault  that  had  just  everything  stuffed  in  it  to  get  it 
out  of  sight.   It  was  a  room  about  ten-by-ten  feet.   Now  it  is 
being  used  as  a  vault  should  be  used  correctly.   This  was  filled 
with  boxes  and  boxes.   I  went  through  every  one  of  those  boxes. 
They  found  things  they  never  knew  existed. 

Riess:     Papers  or  plant  materials? 

Roderick:   It  was  all  paper  stuff.   Boxes  of  papers.   Tons  of  old  water 
bills  and  those  things  we  threw  away.   But  then  I  found  such 
things  as  a  letter  from  the  person  that  they  were  trying  to  hire 
to  build  the  rhododendron  dell.   In  it  he  said  that  he  would  not 
accept  the  job  unless  they  furnished  one  boxcar- load  of  leaf- 
mold,  which  would  cost  six  hundred  dollars. 

Then  I  found,  I  think  that  it  was  from  1948  or  1949,  a 
letter  from  the  Arnold  Arboretum  saying  what  an  s.o.b.  that 
[Ralph]  Chaney  was  for  stealing  all  the  glory  of  the  dawn 
redwood,  when  it  was  Arnold  Arboretum  that  had  gone  over  there 
first  and  brought  back  seed,  and  then,  about  three  or  four 
months  later,  Chaney  goes  over  and  brings  back  a  couple  of 
seedlings  and  more  seed,  and  with  all  kinds  of  publication. 
This  was  a  five  page,  single -spaced  letter. 

Riess:     So,  you  saved  out  all  those  interesting  things? 

Roderick:   Oh,  sure.   Then  finding  the  old  pictures  of  the  canyon  when  it 
was  still  a  dairy  ranch- -1916,  I  think,  the  first  photographs 
were  taken.   One  of  those  man-planted  pines,  that  was  an  old 
pine  then,  is  still  in  existence.   There  were  six  of  them 
planted.   There's  still  one  of  them. 

Riess:     Was  there  always  a  lot  of  fuss  about  the  dawn  redwoods?  Did 

people  come  from  near  and  far  to  see  them  because  they  were  so 
special? 

Roderick:   That  I  don't  remember  so  much.   The  one  thing  about  them  there 
at  the  garden  that's  so  interesting  is  that  the  first  two  were 
planted  above  the  dell,  one  on  each  side  of  the  stream,  and 
they're  much  bigger  than  the  ones  down  in  the  lower  part  of  the 
dell.   This  Harry  Roberts  that  I  was  talking  about  was  tending, 
I  guess,  those  dawn  redwoods  when  they  were  first  brought  in, 
and  there  was  one  scrub,  one  that  just  wasn't  doing  anything--. 

Riess:     A  runt? 

Roderick:   A  real  runt.   He  gave  that  to  my  mother,  and  my  mother  had  the 
first  one  planted  in  Sonoma  County.   She  gave  it  very  tender 


50 


Riess: 
Roderick: 


care,  and  finally  it  took  off,  and  it  did  grow.   I  haven't  taken 
a  look  at  it  for  quite  a  few  years.   But  when  she  sold  the  ranch 
in  about  1970,  I  guess,  it  had  about  a  two -foot  trunk  on  it  at 
that  time.   So,  it  really  took  off. 

But  now  it's  common  enough. 

I  think  now  they've  kind  of  gone  downhill  as  far  as  something  to 
plant.  They're  rooted  from  cuttings,  just  about  like  our  native 
redwood  here. 


California  Native  Area 


Riess: 


Roderick: 


Riess: 

Roderick: 

Riess: 

Roderick: 


Were  you  propagating  them,  or  were  you  not  involved  in  that  kind 
of  activity? 

I  didn't  get  into  that.   I  never  tried  that.   I  propagated  my 
own  things  for  the  native  area.   Of  course,  the  thing  I 
propagated  the  most  was  any  of  our  native  bulbs.   I  specialized 
in  that.   I  had  two  hundred  two-by-two  foot  boxes,  and  I  had 
anywhere  up  to  three  species  of  bulbs- -generally  Brodiaea  and 
Allium  and  Calachortus- -in  each  box,  or  something  like  that. 
When  I  left,  this  fellow  that  took  my  place  let  the  weeds  grow 
and  almost  all  of  those  were  killed  out.   Now  that  Roger  Raiche 
is  there,  he  has  built  up  a  fine  collection  of  them  again,  but 
not  so  extensive. 

When  you  arrived,  was  there  a  lot  of  unplanted  area? 
It  was  almost  all  unplanted. 

I  want  to  get  a  picture  of  what  you  had  to  deal  with  when  you 
arrived.   Was  it  the  same  area  of  the  garden? 

The  same  area,  except  anything  that  was  from  the  main  road  that 
goes  on  down  to,  say,  over  across  the  creek,  from  there  south 
through  the  native  area,  that  was  all  open.   There  was  just  a 
fringe  along  the  main  path  through  the  native  area,  there  was  a 
fringe  of  plants  there,  and  they  had  been  planted  in  gallon 
cans,  can  and  all.   And  they  were  still  dying  and  falling  over, 
getting  their  roots  cut  off.   So,  there  was  practically  nothing 
along  that  main  path  that  was  originally  there.   I  think 
probably  eight  or  nine  plants  only. 


51 


Triumphing  Over  the  Soil 


Riess:     What  did  you  tackle  first? 

Roderick:   First  thing  was  trying  to  get  the  place  cleaned  up,  and  working 
the  soil.   I  tried  to  plant  along  the  front,  but  originally  that 
was  not  to  be  the  Botanical  Garden.   From  the  stream  that  comes 
down  through  the  rhododendron  dell  east  was  supposed  to  be  the 
Botanical  Garden.   The  lawn  is  a  raised  bed,  and  it's  all  the 
topsoil  from  that  front  part  of  the  native  area  and  the  parking 
lot.   On  the  lower  side  of  the  parking  lot  was  the  dump.   I 
spent  years  cleaning  out  broken  glass,  old  wire,  pieces  of  tin 
cans . 

The  soil  was  the  most  horrible  clay.   Finally,  I  got  lots 
of  chicken  manure  and  put  it  on  top  of  this.   It  was  more  litter 
than  it  was  manure.   That  still  wouldn't  break  it  up  enough.   I 
thought  I  had  it  okay,  and  I  had  a  hundred  small  pots  of  plants 
to  plant  out.   I  turned  the  sprinkler  on  and  let  it  run  one 
whole  day.   Turned  it  off  that  night.   I  started  the  next 
morning  with  a  pick,  worked  all  day,  my  whole  eight  hours,  and  I 
got  ninety- four  of  those  two-and-a-half  inch  pots  in  the  ground 
with  a  pick.   And  they  all  died  because  the  ground  went  and 
cracked  again.   In  those  years  you  had  to  be  careful  walking 
across  that  area  because  the  ground  cracked  so  bad,  you  could 
fall  in  and  break  a  leg.   Up  to  eight- inch-wide  cracks.   It  was 
horrible. 

Riess:     Really?   So,  you  just  continued  to  amend  it?  How  did  you 
develop  the  land? 

Roderick:   Baker  put  one  of  his  research  plants  in  that  front  area.   His 

idea  was  that  on  the  desert  there's  a  thunderstorm  every  week-- 
not  in  the  same  place,  but  he  never  figured  that  one  out.   So  he 
had  these  plants  watered  heavily  every  week,  and  they  grow  in 
rock  crevices  or  in  grit.   And  here  it  was  in  this  horrible 
clay,  and  they  rotted. 

Then  he  went  and  demanded  to  have  big  holes  dug  about  two 
foot  in  diameter,  two  foot  deep.   Filled  them  with  sand  and  put 
his  plants  in  there.   Well,  they  held  water  even  better,  and  the 
plants  died  quicker  [laughter].   So  then  I  went  through  and 
broke  this  soil  from  one  of  these  holes  to  the  other  so  that  the 
water  could  run  out  down  in  the  bottom. 

About  the  same  time,  up  at  the  Rad  Lab  they  were  digging 
out  soil  that  was  far  superior  to  what  we  had,  although  it  was 
still  clay.  They  were  taking  it  out  to  build  a  new  building. 


52 


I  stopped  a  fellow.   It  turned  out  he  had  three  trucks,  and 
he's  getting  paid  to  haul  out  at  so  much  a  load.   I  told  my 
immediate  superior,  or  my  boss  I  should  say,  and  hf  says,  "So 
what?   Let  it  go."   (This  is  the  fellow  that  said  that  he  hated 
plants.)   So  I  told  the  assistant  manager.   He  went  over  this 
guy's  head.   He  called  Dr.  Baker's  office,  and  the  secretary 
there  said,  "Oh,  great,  great." 

We  had  the  guys  drop  their  loads  on  to  me.   We  got  sixty- 
two  loads.   The  sixty- third  one  was  backing  down  into  the  area 
when  Dr.  Baker  comes  in.  Well,  the  secretary  hadn't  told  him, 
and  he  threw  this  tantrum.   Absolutely  would  have  no  more.   I 
had  to  push  him  aside  to  keep  him  from  being  run  over.   You 
can't  believe  how  a  grown  man  can  stamp  his  feet,  [laughter]   I 
pushed  him  out,  but  he  had  it  stopped  and  I  couldn't  get 
anymore .   I  wanted  a  hundred  loads . 

Riess:     But  nevertheless,  that  really  changed  the  terrain. 

Roderick:   That  made  all  the  difference.   Then  the  next  thing,  after  that 
Baker  wouldn't  let  us  have  sand  or  grit  to  go  into  the  clayey 
stuff  that  we  got.   But  the  road  was  not  paved  in  front  of  the 
native  area,  and  I'd  take  my  helpers,  when  everybody  was  gone 
that  was  a  boss,  and  we'd  hurry  and  sweep  that  gravel  up  and  run 
wheelbarrow- loads  all  over  on  top  of  that  clay  and  work  it  into 
the  clay  so  it  couldn't  be  seen  too  much.   That's  the  way  we  got 
things  going. 

Riess:     That's  interesting.   That's  really  funny. 

Roderick:   I  was  laughed  at  and  everything  else.   Everybody  knew  what  I  was 
doing,  you  know,  but  he  couldn't  catch  me. 

Riess:     Sounds  like  it  wasn't  truly  a  botanical  garden.   It  was  a  garden 
that  existed  in  response  to  whatever  kind  of  needs  the 
University  had,  and  it  wasn't  a  public  garden. 

Roderick:   When  I  went  there,  there  was  practically  no  class  material 
coming  out  of  the  native  area. 

Riess:     If  they  weren't  doing  class  material,  what  were  they  were  doing 
up  there?  Because  that's  the  very  least  that  they  would  be 
doing. 

Roderick:   This  is  what  I  would  like  to  know  myself.   I  have  no  idea  what 
was  really  thought  of. 

Riess:     It  didn't  have  a  public  function? 


53 


Roderick:   No.   It  was  very  much  of  a  weed  patch. 

I  did  a  lot  of  things  that  nobody  had  ever  thought  about 
doing.   I  started  the  first  vernal  pool  that  was  ever  started. 
I  published  the  very  first  papers  on  the  horticulture  of  a 
vernal  pool.   That  had  never  been  done  before. 

I  brought  in  all  kinds  of  annuals,  tried  everything  to  see 
what  I  could  grow.   A  lot  of  them  would  not  do  anything.   The 
soils  still  are  not  right  for  growing  a  lot  of  that  stuff.   The 
first  and  only  time  that  Dirca  had  ever  been  grown  from  seed  and 
planted  out,  I  had  done  that. 

Riess:     What  is  Dirca? 

Roderick:   It's  a  shrub  that's  restricted  to  the  greater  Bay  Area.   It's 
related  to  daphne.   It's  in  the  same  family.   It's  called 
leatherwood,  because  you  can  take  the  stems  and  tie  a  knot  in 
them,  it's  so  pliable.   It  is  on  the  rare  and  endangered  list. 
Anyhow,  I  got  a  bunch  of  seed  of  that- -a  hell  of  a  chore  to  get 
the  seed.   I  checked  the  plants  every  week.   Went  out  one  week, 
looked  at  them,  and  no,  it's  going  to  be  another  couple  of 
weeks.   Then  I  went  out  the  next  week  and  the  seed  was  all  gone. 
It  drops  off  before  it  looks  like  it's  ripe. 

I  got  down  on  my  hands  and  knees  in  this  patch  and  I  got 
about  two  hundred  and  fifty  seeds.   I  got  about  two  hundred  to 
grow,  and  I  got  about  twenty  of  those  established  in  gallon 
cans.   Of  those  I  had,  I  think  seven  of  them  survived  out  in  the 
open  ground.   To  this  day  there  are  still  one  or  two  of  them 
left  there  at  the  garden. 

Riess:     And  this  is  a  good  survival  rate? 

Roderick:   Yes,  I  think  so.   There  have  been  others  that  have  grown  on  and 
had  better  soils,  and  hopefully  they  were  planted  at  better 
locations. 

Riess:     That's  just  a  reminder  of  how  much  you  have  to  do  to  get  your 
results. 

Roderick:   I  did  a  lot  of  that  kind  of  stuff.   Of  course,  that  to  me  was 
pure  joy,  just  trying  out  everything. 


54 


Plant  Islands,  Soil  Tests 


Riess:     When  you  talk  about  making  the  vernal  pool,  and  developing  the 
pygmy  forest  and  such  things,  was  your  thinking  about  plant 
communities  just  developing?   How  many  communities  do  you  have 
within  that  California  native  garden? 

Roderick:   I  never  took  time  to  figure  out. 

Riess:     At  the  Oakland  Museum  the  California  transect  is  organized  in 
nine  biotic  zones.   Was  this  way  of  looking  at  California 
natives  developed  back  when  you  started  working  there? 

Roderick:   I  never  thought  about  that.   I  looked  at  it  more  later  on  like 

what  Ledyard  Stebbins  called  his  "plant  islands,"  and  I  remember 
looking  at  all  these  areas  and  finding  these  different  things 
and  oh,  yes,  that  soil's  such  and  such,  and  so  that's  going  to 
be  different,  and  not  knowing  for  sure  how  acid  it  was  or 
alkaline.   But  I'd  take  and  duplicate  something  towards  that 
type  of  soil,  with  more  or  less  some  of  the  minerals  I  might 
find  in  there,  sneak  a  little  bit  of  lime  in,  for  instance,  to 
get  more  like  what  they  found  in  one  place,  or  add  lots  and  lots 
of  acid  stuff. 

Of  course,  where  I  was  born  and  raised  there  in  Petaluma, 
it  was  very  alkaline,  and  we  just  kept  putting  in  more  and  more 
humus  to  counteract,  to  make  it  more  acid.   I  was  using  that, 
not  thinking  so  much  of  acidity,  except  like  in  the  Central 
Valley  where  you  find  the  vernal  pools  and  you  would  find  the 
white  coating  on  top  of  some  of  those.   This  is  where  I  would 
put  lime  in  to  give  it  those  conditions.   But  always  I  was  using 
grit  and  sand  and  humus  to  break  up  the  clay  so  roots  could  get 
down. 

Riess:     If  you  brought  back  some  plant  which  would  be  practically 

impossible  to  grow  in  the  soil  up  at  the  Botanical  Garden,  did 
you  test  the  soil  in  the  field  and  try  to  duplicate  that? 

Roderick:   No.   I  would  never  go  into  that.   But  I  had  the  feeling  in  my 
hand  what  a  soil  should  feel  like.   I  could  take  and  feel  that: 
oh  yes,  this  has  got  more  grit  than  most  places,  so  I'm  going  to 
have  to  get  this  onto  a  mound  to  get  the  drainage.   Quite  often 
I  would  dig  down  into  the  clay  and  put  in  a  transition  zone. 

When  I  went  to  work  up  at  Tilden  it  was  just  the  opposite 
with  Jim  Roof.   He  didn't  know  there  would  be  any  difference  in 


55 


soil,  you'd  just  plant  something  on  top.   Then  he  found  out  they 
wouldn't  grow  in  that  horrible  clay.   He  then  made  mounds  of 
good  drainage  on  top  of  the  clay  without  making  a  transition 
zone.   So  the  roots  go  down  and  hit  the  clay  and  turn  out,  and 
if  you  don't  water  them,  they  die.   I  would  always  make  that 
transition  zone. 

Riess:     They're  able  to  penetrate  that? 

Roderick:   They  kind  of  adapt  to  a  heavier  soil.   Here  in  my  own  place  with 
this  horrible  clay,  when  I  start  to  convert  to  get  a  good  top 
soil,  the  first  layers  I  spade  into  the  clay.   I  spade  in,  and  I 
do  that  three  times,  breaking  the  clay  up  as  much  as  possible  to 
the  smallest  particles  so  I  would  get  a  good  transition  zone. 
I've  always  done  that. 

Riess:     And  then  when  the  roots  get  down  there,  they  toughen  up 

sufficiently  so  that  they  can  then  fight  their  way  through? 

Roderick:   They  seem  then  to  be  able  to  penetrate  into  the  clay.   At  least 
that's  what  I  kind  of  have  worked  out  over  the  years,  without 
doing  any  more  research  work  on  it. 

Riess:     Speaking  of  Jim  Roof,  was  it  helpful  for  you  to  be  able  to  go 
over  the  hill  into  Tilden  Botanic  Garden  and  see  what  he  was 
doing  when  you  were  working  at  the  UC  Botanical  Garden? 

Roderick:   No.   At  that  time  I  didn't  do  any  of  that. 


A  Vernal  Pool  and  a  Pygmy  Forest 


Riess : 


Roderick: 


Why  did  you  do  a  vernal  pool? 
vernal  pool? 


Where  did  you  see  your  first 


I'd  seen  them  earlier.   Then  when  I  started  to  work  for  the 
University,  and  I  was  travelling  around,  I  got  to  see  real 
vernal  pools,  more  than  what  I  was  ever  used  to  up  in  Sonoma, 
you  know,  up  in  through  that  part  of  the  country. 

The  vernal  pool  plants  were  such  interesting  plants,  and  we 
had  one  graduate  student  that  came  in- -oh,  I  hadn't  been  there 
more  than  two  or  three  years --and  was  doing  research  on  this  one 
genus  called  Downingia.   I  got  fascinated  with  that,  especially. 
So  I  had  to  have  a  vernal  pool.   I  made  a  little  vernal  pool 
which  is  still  there  and  still  in  use. 


56 


Riess:     I  remember  seeing  Downingia  down  at  Coyote  Hills,  in  one  of 
their  ponds. 

Roderick:  Yes.  In  good  years  there's  lots  of  it  down  there.  But  the  best 
one  of  all  was  over  near  Byron,  so  [ironically]  they  made  a  good 
hay  field  out  of  it,  levelled  it,  and  filled  the  vernal  pool  in. 
Now  the  big,  big  patch  is  not  so  good  anymore. 

Riess:     How  about  pygmy  forests?  Where  did  you  get  that  idea? 

Roderick:   Well,  my  father  loved  bonsai.   My  mother  and  father  used  to  go 
up  to  Fort  Bragg,  and  my  mother  always  would  have  to  go  out  and 
see  the  dwarf  forests,  and  my  father  got  fascinated.   Near  the 
spagnum  moss  bog,  which  has  now  got  a  big  fence  around  it  to 
protect  it,  there  was  the  city  dump  where  the  neighbors  dumped 
all  their  garbage. 

It  was  just  a  little  dirt  track  out  there,  and  how  my  folks 
got  out  there  I  don't  know.   But  they  saw  these  trees  that  had 
been  run  over  more  than  once,  all  twisted  and  gnarled.   He'd  dig 
them  up  out  of  the  little  road. 

Riess:     This  is  up  at  Fort  Bragg?  Right  outside  the  town  of  Fort  Bragg? 
Roderick:  Yes,  just  off  of  Highway  20. 

Anyway,  my  father  dug  up  these  old  twisted  trees. 

I  started  to  work  down  at  UC  shortly  after  my  father  died. 
Closed  out  the  nursery  and  got  everything  straightened  out.   I 
went  and  I  took  a  lot  of  ray  plants  that  were  there  that  my 
mother  couldn't  take  care  of,  and  there  were  several  of  these 
bonsai  that  had  never  been  touched.   They  were  still  in  the 
original  soil. 

I  don't  know  how  long  I  had  them,  but  I'd  say  about  three 
or  four  years.   I  made  this  little  cement  platform  with  a  little 
edge  around  it.   And  I  knew  a  friend  who  had  some  of  the  soil  in 
his  place,  and  I  got  the  soil  and  dug  a  few  more  plants  out  of 
his  place.   He  was  clearing  it.   And  I  made  my  first  little 
dwarf  forest. 

The  oldest,  biggest  plants  were  the  ones  that  my  father 
had.   The  pine  tree  that's  there  today  was  one  of  those  that  my 
father  had  dug.   That  would  have  been  about  1950  when  he  dug 
that.   It's  still  there.   It's  not  very  big,  and  it  was  old 
then.   That's  how  I  got  that  started. 


57 


That  dwarf  forest  there  at  UC  now  has  more  than  doubled  its 
size.   I  had  just  a  tiny  area,  what  I  could  handle  and  take  care 
of.   Now  that  these  other  soils  have  been  all  amended,  you  know, 
and  all  this  here,  it's  got  so  now  that  it's  easy  for  a  person 
to  take  care  of  a  bigger  area.   They  have,  I  guess,  tripled  the 
size  of  that  piece  of  land  there. 

Riess:     I'll  give  your  voice  a  rest  and  read  a  description  from  an 
article  in  a  campus  publication  fBerkeleyan.  April  18,  1990, 
Vol.  18,  No.  20]  that  came  out  around  the  time  of  the  100th 
anniversary  of  the  Botanical  Garden.   It  starts  out: 

"Surrounded  by  poppies  more  vibrant  than 
taxicabs,  the  vernal  pool  at  the  University's 
Botanical  Garden  is  a  replica  of  rain-  filled 
ponds  that  are  disappearing  in  the  onslaught  of 
urbanization  and  agricultural  development  in 
California's  Central  Valley.   Nearby  is  a 
hillside  dotted  with  boulders  and  clumps  of 
delicate  wildf  lowers,  a  recreation  of  alpine 
fields  above  eleven  thousand  feet  high  in  the 
Sierra  Nevada.  " 

Is  that  alpine  field  area  yours? 

Roderick:   No.   That's  just  real  new.   I  had  made  a  rock  garden-  like  area 
in  there  to  grow  alpines.   Again,  I  had  on  the  top  part  all 
granite.   I  brought  all  those  rocks  in  on  my  own,  all  the  soil 
in  on  my  own,  the  granitic  soils.   I  figured  I  brought  in 
somewhere  between  sixty  and  seventy  tons  of  materials  over  the 
years  doing  that. 

Riess:     In  the  back  of  some  vehicle  of  yours? 
Roderick:  My  pick-up. 

Riess:          "Then  there  are  the  stunted  pines  and  cypress 
painstakingly  transferred  from  the  Mendocino 
coast  along  with  acid-rich  soil  for  the 
reconstruction  of  a  pygmy  forest." 


Riess:     Do  you  know  the  name  Edward  Greene  from  way  back,  the  person  who 
apparently  started  the  garden? 

Roderick:   He  was  the  founder  of  the  Department  of  Botany  for  the 
University. 


58 


Riess:     This  says  of  him, 

"Something  of  a  visionary,  Greene  insisted  on 
collecting  the  native  plants  of  the  state  for 
the  garden  situated  on  the  gentle  slope  where 
Moffitt  Library  now  stands." 

Did  some  of  those  old  plant  materials  end  up  in  your  native 
garden? 

Roderick:   No.   I  think  there  were  hardly  any  of  those  kinds  of  plants  that 
were  moved  up  to  UC  in  the  1920s.   I  think  mostly  potted  plants 
and  things  like  that  were  moved  up.   Probably  more  cuttings 
taken  of  what  was  on  the  campus  proper  and  grown  on.   As  far  as 
I  can  remember  of  what  I've  gone  through,  there  were  no  real 
specimens  moved  up. 


Native  Garden,  Strybing  Arboretum 


Riess:     Where  else  could  you  go  and  see  masses  of  California  natives 

being  grown?   Had  Strybing  Arboretum  developed  their  California 
native  section? 

Roderick:   No.   About  1962  or  1963  I  really  got  acquainted  with  Art 

Menzies.   He  was  just  starting  the  native  area  there  himself.   I 
kept  him  sober  longer  than  anybody  else  had  ever  done,  five  days 
short  of  six  months  without  taking  a  drink.   We  went  out 
practically  every  weekend  someplace  in  California  and  collected. 
Of  course,  he  couldn't  drive.   I  think  it  was  because  he  knew 
he'd  get  probably  drunk  and  would  wreck  a  car  and  kill  somebody. 
I  think  this  is  probably  why  he  wouldn't  drive,  but  I  never 
found  out. 

Riess:     But  he  was  not  your  mentor  in  all  of  this? 

Roderick:  No.  There  was  already  a  lot  of  planting,  like  the  redwoods  and 
all  that,  in  Strybing.  But  he's  the  one  that  really  went  on  to 
develop  the  rest  of  the  area. 

Then  he  got  acquainted  with  Barbara--!  can't  remember  what 
her  name  was  before  she  got  her  divorce- -and  they  married,  and 
she  took  [drove]  him.   But  he  still  couldn't  leave  liquor  alone. 

Riess:     Barbara  Menzies- -I  know  that  name.   Wildf lowers? 


59 


Roderick:   Yes,  it  goes  way,  way  back.   I  got  to  know  several  of  the 

Menzies  here  in  California.   Rob,  who  lived  in  San  Rafael,  was 
the  head  of  the  family,  and  he  had  the  manor  chair  and  the 
family  silver,  the  family  china.   He  was  plant-happy.   I  never 
found  out  exactly  what  different  persons  did  for  certain,  but  I 
do  know  that  the  cook  was  a  rose  expert,  and  the  butler  kept  all 
the  equipment  in  good  working  condition  and  kept  the  paths, 
things  like  that. 

But  Art  and  both  his  mother  and  father  and  his  brother  were 
all  alcoholics.   The  brother  was,  most  of  the  time,  in  an 
institution.   His  brain  was  gone  pretty  well.   Finally  Art  just 
got  so  bad  that  he  went  and  killed  himself.   He  knew  he'd  been 
drunk  and  so  bad  on  the  job  for  so  long  that  they  were  going  to 
fire  him,  so  he  committed  suicide.   But  what  a  plantsman! 


Western  Hills  Nursery,  Occidental 


Riess:     That's  a  sad  side  note. 

Had  Marshall  Olbrich  and  Lester  Hawkins  gotten  Western 
Hills  Nursery  in  Occidental  going  by  then? 

Roderick:   Let's  see,  it  was  after  my  mother  built  her  retirement  home, 
which  would  have  been  about  the  1970s,  when  Western  Hills  was 
trying  to  get  going.   I  can't  tell  you  exactly  how  we  got 
together.   My  mother  would  have  them  down  to  Petaluma  for 
dinner.   They'd  talk  plants  like  mad,  so  quite  often  I'd  be  in 
on  this . 

My  mother  would  go  out—you  always  had  to  come  before  dark 
so  she  could  go  out --and  she'd  dig  up  a  lot  of  things  for  the 
[Occidental]  nursery.   They'd  always  bring  her  a  few  things  from 
what  they  were  getting  together.   They  would  trade  back  and 
forth.   There  are  still  quite  a  few  plants  that  they  consider 
good  that  my  mother  introduced,  and  my  mother  bought  a  lot  of 
things  from  them  that  they  couldn't  keep  growing  there  at  their 
place. 

Riess:     Their  place  in  Occidental  is  awfully  damp  and  cool. 
Roderick:   Yes. 

One  thing  still  has  not  really  got  on  the  market,  and  my 
mother  found  out  by  accident  how  to  grow  it.   This  was  a 
Hydrangea  villosa.   It's  one  that  has  to  have  lime.   She  planted 


60 


the  plant  right  against  the  foundation  of  her  hothouse.   It  was 
by  accident  that  she  did  this,  and  it  did  beautifully.   In  acid 
soils  it  does  zero.   It  was  planted  about  six  inches  from  the 
foundation,  so  of  course  the  roots  immediately  got  right  against 
all  that  nice,  fresh  cement.   It  is  a  magnificent  plant. 

Riess:     Western  Hills  is  more  like  a  garden  than  a  nursery. 

Roderick:   It  is  a  garden-nursery. 

Riess:     Was  their  intention  to  create  a  California  native  garden? 

Roderick:   It  was  created  to  grow  unusual  plants.   It's  still  that  same  way 
today . 

Riess:     Unusual  native  plants  or  not? 

Roderick:   Anything  and  everything,  including  natives. 

Riess:     They  were  not  pursuing  the  natives? 

Roderick:   No.   They  loved  natives,  but  then  they  got  so  they  really  went 
wild  for  Australians --they  planted  a  lot  of  those.   Then  they 
went  into  the  perennials.   They  went- -Lester  never  went  to 
England  to  do  anything,  but  Marshall  did,  and  collected  lots  of 
the  new  perennials. 

They  were  not  too  particular  whether  they  were  high- 
maintenance  or  low  water  requirements  and  all  this.   California 
Flora  [Nursery]  in  Fulton  is  more  interested  in  low  water- 
requirement  plants,  but  Western  Hills  is  still  going  in  for 
plants  that  need  a  lot  of  water.   See,  they  are  in  a  high 
rainfall  area,  and  that  used  to  be  a  boggy  area.   It  used  to  be 
all  just  solid  rushes.   It's  wet  almost  the  year  around. 

Riess:     I  mentioned  that  nursery  because  being  at  the  Botanical  Garden 
for  seventeen  years,  you  must  have  gotten  quite  a  network  of 
people  who  could  tell  you  where  to  go  and  get  things.   I'm 
trying  to  see  how  that  network  evolved. 

Roderick:   It  turned  out  that  all  the  graduate  students  and  so  forth  came 
to  me  to  ask  where  they  could  find  different  things  in  the  wild. 
I  was  always  interested  in  every  plant  I  could  get  my  nose  into, 
so  of  course  any  of  these  new  nurseries  and  things  that  way,  I 
had  to  get  my  nose  in  there  right  away  and  find  out  what  was 
going  on. 


61 


Cross-State  Collecting  Trips 


Riess: 


Roderick 


Riess : 


Roderick 


Riess: 

Roderick: 

Riess: 

Roderick: 


On  your  trips  I  know  you  had  plants  that  you  had  to  get.   But  in 
seeking  those  plants  did  you  cover  every  corner  of  the  state? 

I  used  to.   When  I  worked  for  UC  I  tried  to  be  in  every  county 
once  a  year—well,  it  turned  out  to  be  about  every  year  and  a 
half.   I  used  to  start  out  New  Year's  Day,  go  down  into  the  low 
desert  and  gradually  work  up  farther  north  and  higher  up  into 
the  mountains .   I  had  a  certain  place  I  had  to  go  year  after 
year  and  see  what  everything  was  like  there. 

When  you  got  to  an  area  would  you  talk  to  locals  to  find  out 
where  things  were? 

Sometimes.   More  than  anything  else,  it's  just  what  I  observed. 
For  instance,  to  go  to  the  desert  I  always  went  over  Tehachapi, 
got  on  the  far  side  onto  the  desert,  then  I  turned  north,  and  I 
used  to  camp  all  the  time  for  the  first  night  at  Jawbone  Canyon. 
I  loved  the  name  of  that.   All  of  a  sudden  I  found  out  that 
there  were  unbelievable  masses  of  flowers  from  January  on 
through  April,  until  finally  now  the  motorcyclists  have  just 
torn  the  canyon  to  pieces. 

But  I  could  go  in  there  and  find  three  or  four  species  of 
Gilias  for  class  material,  in  masses,  and  things  of  that  nature 
that  I  could  always  get.   Plus,  being  in  a  canyon  with  many 
little  side  washouts,  you  could  always  find  a  place  that  was 
sheltered  from  the  winds.   It  was  such  a  good  place  for  the 
first  night  and  the  last  night.   It  was  a  seven-hour  drive  from 
that  area  to  home.   It  was  just  a  good  stop. 

Once  you  parked  your  vehicle- -truck,  I  take  it?  Was  it  always  a 
truck? 

I  tried  to  have  a  pick-up.   I  still  have  a  pick-up. 
For  many  hours  would  you  explore? 

I  was  rather  cautious.   Too  cautious,  probably.   If  the  road  had 
not  had  very  much  traffic  on  it,  and  you  could  only  see  two  or 
three  cars  a  day,  I  wouldn't  go  on  it  because  I'd  be  by  myself, 
and  God  only  knows  what  can  happen  to  a  person  out  that  way.   In 
fact,  one  time  I  tried  one  of  these  roads,  and  I  could  see  where 
cars  had  been,  and  I  went  out  there  and  sank  down  out  of  sight. 
Took  a  share  of  one  day  trying  to  get  myself  out.   That  was  my 
first  education  on  the  desert. 


62 


Riess:     How  about  snakes  and  things  like  that? 

Roderick:   I  don't  pay  any  attention  to  snakes.   They're  friendly,  they're 
nice. 

Riess:     I  guess  if  you're  looking  for  things,  you're  observing 
everything  anyway. 

Roderick:   You're  going  to  see  one,  and  especially,  you  can  hear  one. 


Programs:  Indian  Uses,  and  Explorers  of  the  West 


Riess:     Back  to  the  Botanical  Garden.   You  said,  when  you  were  summing 
things  up  in  the  beginning,  that  the  educational  programs  were 
the  greatest  change --the  docents  making  the  garden  available  and 
intelligible  to  children. 

Roderick:   It's  the  greatest  thing  that's  ever  happened. 

Riess:     Bob  Ornduff  said  that  you  developed  the  program  on  Indian  uses 
of  native  plants.   When  did  that  happen  and  why? 

Roderick:   Well,  several  things.   On  the  labels  that  we  have  for  the  plants 
you  have  to  have  the  author  who  described  the  plant,  and  if  they 
had  Indian  uses  you  have  to  have  that  on  it.   So  curiosity 
killed  the  cat.   Dr.  Beard  had  a  couple  of  books  on  the  Indian 
uses.   They  were  very  poor,  but  she  had  them.   I  got  interested 
in  it.   "Well,"  I'd  think,  "That  doesn't  sound  very  good,"  so  I 
had  to  get  my  nose  into  more  and  more  of  this.   On  the  other 
side  of  the  wall  in  there  [gestures]  I've  got  a  whole  row  of 
books  on  Indian  uses.   I've  gone  into  that  a  great  deal. 

I  worked  up  the  labels  for  the  first  trail.   Well,  it 
wasn't  good  enough  for  them,  so  they  hired  some  girl  to  do  this. 
Oh  God,  I  got  so  mad  at  her!   I'd  bawl  her  out.   They  went  ahead 
and  published  a  trail  guide  with  numbers  identifying  the  plants, 
and  they  had  the  wrong  picture,  and  the  wrong  plants  with  the 
wrong  uses,  and  everything  else.   I  screamed  and  bitched,  and 
finally  I  got  those  pretty  well  straightened  out. 

Then  I  got  more  interested  in  these  authors.   Quite  often 
there  would  be  two  and  three  persons  a  plant  was  named  after, 
and  I  had  to  find  out  what  that  was  all  about.   Quite  often  one 
of  them  would  be  the  person  that  found  the  plant.   So  I  went 
into  the  early  plant  explorers  of  the  West  and  worked  up  a  very 


63 


interesting  lecture,  and  I  have  to  give  it  —  every  few  months 
somebody  else  will  ask  for  it. 

Riess:     You  mean  now? 

Roderick:   Oh  yes.   I  got  my  slides  permanently  set  up,  and  I've  got  a 

whole  list  of  all  the  explorers,  the  dates  that  they  were  here 
in  the  West,  and  what  some  of  the  more  important  plants  were 
that  they  found. 

Riess:     Have  you  published  that,  also? 

Roderick:   No.   I  have  it  partly  worked  up.   My  problem  is  trying  to  write 
so  a  person  can  make  sense  out  of  it.   I  have  to  have  a  lot  of 
good  editors  to  work  on  me. 

Riess:     I  sounds  like  an  important  thing  to  get  onto  paper.   Why  don't 
you  just  tape-record  it  and  then  let  somebody  transcribe  it? 

Roderick:   Well,  I've  got  somewhere  put  away  in  this  house  about  two -thirds 
of  them,  oh,  let's  say  one  page,  and  for  most  of  these  I  even 
got  line  drawings  made  to  have  a  little  booklet  done. 

Riess:     Did  you  give  lectures  on  the  Indian  uses? 

Roderick:   The  Indian  uses- -I  did  a  little  bit  at  UC,  but  mostly  it  was 

giving  lectures  out  around.   At  one  time,  when  the  Native  Plant 
Society  was  quite  young,  there  was  one  member  of  the  board  of 
directors  that  was  a  grammar  school  teacher- -the  greatest  person 
you  ever  saw  in  your  life.   He  got  me  involved  with  this.   I 
made  up  a  lot  of  the  stuff,  and  he  got  me  into  going  around  to 
some  of  the  schools  and  showing  this . 

I  had  a  tug  o'  war  rope,  you  know,  that  I  made  out  of 
Fremontodendron  bark.   It  was  long  enough  so  that  three  kids 
could  hang  onto  each  end  of  it,  and  then  they  could  see  if  they 
could  break  it.   Oh,  gosh,  the  kids  just  loved  getting  involved. 
I  really  had  a  lot  of  fun  doing  that.   I  still  have  a  lot  of 
Indian  friends--.   No,  most  of  my  good  Indian  friends,  the  old 
ones,  are  all  dead  now. 

Riess:     Did  you  pursue  your  questions  about  plants  with  them? 
Roderick:   There  was  this  one  lady  that  I  absolutely  adored. 
Riess:     Where  was  she? 

Roderick:   She  was  up  on  the  Klamath  River.   She  was  a  Karok--the  last 

pure-blooded  Karok--and  her  grandmother  was  the  last  medicine 


64 


man  of  the  tribe.   When  Grandma  got  too  old,  little  Ethel  did 
the  collecting  of  the  plants  for  her  grandma.   She  still  lived 
where  it  was  primitive  enough  that  she  kept  three  dogs  to  make 
sure  that  one  of  them  would  find  any  bear  that  cam«^  wandering 
into  her  place.   Her  address  was  Somes  Bar,  California. 

Riess:     Karok  is  an  Indian  group  I  don't  know. 

Roderick:   It  was  immediately  above  the  Hoopas.   The  other  interesting 

thing  was  that  the  Hoopas  were  kind  of  warlike,  while  the  Karoks 
were  very  friendly.   Even  today,  some  of  the  Hoopas- -I  just 
don't  get  very  close  to  them. 

I  was  visiting  this  one  Indian  lady,  and  this  fellow  saw  me 
there.   Pretty  soon  I  left,  and  we  met  someplace.   Boy,  I'm 
telling  you  right  now,  he  was  friendly  and,  "Come  on,  we're 
going  to  have  a  big  dance  tonight  up  at  the  Forks  of  the  Salmon. 
Come  on  up.   Oh,  we're  going  to  have  fun.   Everybody's  going  to 
get  drunk,  and  the  blood's  going  to  fly  in  all  directions.   Oh 
boy,  are  we  going  to  have  beautiful  fights!"  You  know,  this 
kind  of  people. 

Riess:     Were  the  people  in  anthropology  interested  in  any  way  in  what 
you  were  finding  out  from  the  Indians? 

Roderick:   No.   They  were  doing  their  own  thing,  and  I  wasn't  good  enough 
for  that. 

Riess:     It  sounds  like  you  are  kind  of  a  natural  teacher,  and  maybe  not 
everybody  up  at  the  Botanical  Garden  was --that  your  reason  for 
doing  this  was  that  you  were  interested  in  sharing  it. 

Roderick:   Yes.   I  love  sharing.   In  fact,  this  last  Saturday  down  at  the 
arboretum  at  the  UC  Santa  Cruz  campus  I  gave  a  lecture,  and  I 
was  introduced  as  "too  generous,  giving  away  most  of  my  garden 
to  anybody  that  wants  it,  as  well  as  knowledge."  That's  one  of 
the  ways  I  was  introduced.   That's  all  I  like  doing  is  sharing. 
It's  like  with  the  Indians.   I  have  had  so  much  pleasure  with 
them,  and  I  love  to  share.   I've  learned  from  them. 


Roses  and  Orchids,  and  the  Public 


Riess:     In  an  article  [Herbert  G.]  Baker  wrote,  I  believe  in  1977  in 
Pacific  Horticulture,  he  said  that  the  Botanical  Garden's 
horticultural  connections  to  rose  and  herb  and  orchid  groups  and 
so  on  were  stronger  than  the  connections  to  the  Department  of 


65 


Botany.   Rose  and  orchid  growers  and  so  on  would  visit  the 
gardens  and  get  involved  in  giving  things  to  the  gardens ,  and 
the  botany  department  had  kind  of  withdrawn? 

Roderick:   The  orchid  collection  had  quite  a  few  hybrids  and  such  things 

given  to  the  garden,  of  no  botanical  value.   At  one  time  it  was 
a  very  lovely  collection  with  a  lot  of  showy  plants.   The  rose 
garden  many,  many  years  back  was  a  very  big  one,  but  I  think  it 
was  gone  before  Baker  ever  got  there.   Now  they've  got  a 
heritage  rose  collection.   Rather  small,  but  it  is  also  to 
encourage  more  people  to  come  in  and  visit  the  Botanic  Garden. 

Riess:     I  see,  the  effort  is  to  bring  in  people. 

Roderick:  Yes.  It  can  go  two  ways.  Botanically  it  is  interesting,  and  it 
shows  the  history  of  roses.  But  also  it  is  something  that  joins 
the  wild  part  with  the  modern  plants. 

Riess:  Were  cultivars  being  produced  up  there,  or  was  that  not  the  work 
of  the  Botanical  Garden? 

Roderick:   I  think  you  are  going  to  find  that  cultivars  are  coming  from 

other  places .   We  were  selecting  out  wild  plants  that  showed  a 
cultivar  form,  but  not  stressing  that.   Rancho  Santa  Ana  Botanic 
Garden  has  done  a  lot  more  than  that.   Santa  Barbara  Botanic 
Garden  has  done  a  lot  more  than  that.   Tilden  now  is  going  quite 
a  bit  that  way.   In  fact,  we've  got  one  plant  that  we  have 
figured  out  a  cultivar  name  for  and  we'll  be  introducing  it 
probably  this  fall. 

Riess:     And  then  you  make  it  available  through  plant  sales? 

Roderick:  Well,  we'll  be  giving  cuttings  to  nurserymen  and  places  like 
that  to  get  it  into  cultivation. 


More  on  Employees  and  Managers  at  the  Garden 


Riess:  Do  you  remember  a  fellow  named  Paul  Hutchinson? 

Roderick:  Boy,  do  I! 

Riess:  Did  we  mention  him  already? 

Roderick:  We  just  barely  mentioned  him,  but  that's  all. 

Riess:  He  was  the  senior  garden  botanist? 


66 


Roderick: 

Riess: 
Roderick; 


Riess: 


Roderick: 


Yes.   The  funny  thing  was  that  they  found  out  after  we  finally 
got  rid  of  him  that  he  had  practically  no  more  education  than  I 
did.  [laughs] 

Do  you  think  you  scared  people  who  worked  under  you? 

I  don't  think  so.   I  did  not  antagonize  anyone.   In  fact,  one 
fellow  that  was  way  under  me,  he  was  so  horrible  and  bad,  I  kept 
telling  him,  "You're  so  bad.   If  you  make  so  much  trouble  again, 
I'm  going  to  see  if  I  can  have  you  fired."  The  fellow  that  was 
the  manager  then,  the  foreigner,  he  had  plenty  of  excuses  to 
fire  the  fellow,  but  still  wouldn't  fire  him. 


That  was  Anton  Christ  who  was  the  manager? 
fellow?" 


That's  the  "foreign 


Yes.   I  can't  remember  the  guy's  name  now.   I  can  still  see  him. 
He  was  an  alcoholic,  and  he  would  leave  the  weeds  and  pull  the 
big  plants.   In  fact,  he  would  take  a  saw  and  saw  off  shrubs 
when  he  was  supposed  to  be  only  weeding.   That  guy,  every  time  I 
see  him  he  still  thanks  me  for  all  the  things  I  tried  to  do  for 
him,  including  firing  him,  I  guess!   I  don't  know.   He's  still 
friendly.   But  I  have  tried  never  to  antagonize  a  person.   I 
would  tell  a  person  exactly  what  I  thought  and  why,  so  there's 
no  way  that  they  could  be  mad. 


Sixties  Disruptions  at  the  Garden 


Roderick:   I  went  through  so  much  in  the  sixties,  all  these  flower  people 

and  all  this,  and  especially  the  minorities  raising  hell.   Hate, 
hate,  hate  everywhere.    I  got  the  wild  idea  that  if  I  use  the 
expression  "hate"  in  a  jovial  way,  maybe  we  can  get  rid  of  the 
hate  in  the  word  "hate."   So  I  keep  telling  everybody  that  I 
hate  them  and  all  this,  especially  to  these  young  kids- -well, 
some  of  them  were  forty  years  old- -that  I  work  with  and  have 
around  all  the  time.   I  keep  telling  them  that  I  hate  them,  but, 
"Here,  take  this  plant.   Now,  shut  up.   I  hate  you."   I'd  do  all 
these  kinds  of  things.   It  got  so  that  everybody  right  now,  they 
will  start  laughing,  "I  hate  you  too!"   It  rooted  the  hate  out 
of  that  word. 

Riess:     You're  thinking  about  when  there  was  so  much  disruption  down  on 
campus . 

Roderick:   Oh,  God!   I  got  in  the  middle  of  some  of  it. 


67 


Riess:     How? 

Roderick:   There  at  UC  they  hired  a  bunch  of  these  minorities.   Everybody 

left.  I  was  the  high  man  on  duty  at  UC.  I'm  telling  you,  there 
were  a  couple  of  days  there  that  I  didn't  know  if  I  was  going  to 
survive  from  one  day  to  another. 

Riess:     You  mean  up  at  the  garden? 

Roderick:   Yes.   There  were  some  blacks,  but  a  lot  of  them,  I  think,  were 
probably  Mexican.   They  practically  destroyed  the  place,  but  I 
kept  two  jumps  ahead  of  them.   They  were  going  to  kill  me 
because  I  put  down  everything  absolutely  accurate  on  their 
papers. 

This  one  kid  worked  two  half -days.   I  put  down  at  the 
bottom  of  the  paper  where  I  added  it  up,  "one  day."  But  he 
couldn't  figure  out  that  one-half  and  one-half  made  one  whole. 
They  had  this  handle  with  a  short  chain,  I'd  say,  about  eighteen 
inches  long,  with  a  big  block  of  wood  with  big  lead  slugs 
sticking  out.   He  was  twirling  this  around  me,  right  around  my 
shoulders,  right  close  to  my  head. 

Riess:     It  sounds  hideous,  but  it  doesn't  sound  like  it  had  anything  to 
do  with  the  flower  children.   What  was  the  problem? 

Roderick:   It  was  I  was  stealing  time  from  them,  and  I  was  forcing  them  to 
work,  and  I  was  the  establishment,  and  I  was  this,  that,  and 
everything  else.   This  kid  kept  working  this  right  up  around  me, 
right  close  to  my  face,  just  missing  my  head  by  a  few  inches. 

Finally,  one  of  the  other  ones  said,  "Man,  don't  you  know 
what  that  thing  is?"   I  said,  "I  don't  know  what  that  thing  is." 
The  guy  stopped,  and  there  was  one  of  these  slugs  out.   I  said, 
"Oh,  look,  you  lost  one  of  these  here.   Here,  have  it  back." 
They  couldn't  believe  it.   I  was  "so  stupid,"  you  know.   This  is 
the  way  I  kept  ahead  of  them. 

Finally,  they  got  down  to  one  of  the  hothouses,  and  they 
were  smashing  pots  of  plants.   Unknown  to  them,  they  weren't 
very  desirable  plants;  they  were  just  filling  space,  really.   I 
raised  some  hell  about  that.   I  said,  "On  top  of  that,  you  know 
you're  already  signed  out  for  the  rest  of  the  day."   "Oh, 
whoopee,"  they  had  made  their  money.   I  refused  to  sign  some  of 
these  papers ,  the  kids  had  done  so  much  damage  and  so  much 
trouble. 


68 


There  was  a  woman  that  was --these  were  high  school  kids-- 
she  was  still  signing  them  in.   I  said,  "No,  I  will  not  sign 
those  under  any  condition.   If  you  sign  them,  that's  your 
problem,  but  I  refuse.   These  kids  are  not  any  good." 

Riess:     Who  sent  them  up  in  the  first  place? 

Roderick:   It  was  some  kind  of  doing  with  the  city  or  the  state  or 

something,  I  don't  know,  to  give  these  kids  that  were  minorities 
and  of  the  lowest  quality,  trying  to  teach  them--. 

Their  superiors  who  were  sending  them  out,  they  thought 
they  were  doing  good,  but  they  would  never  set  down  on  them 
themselves.   Now,  that  was  not  doing  the  kids  any  good.   I  tried 
to  get  a  little  bit  of  work  out  of  them.   But  oh  boy,  I'm 
telling  you,  that  one  day  I  thought  for  sure  I  was  going  to  get 
killed. 


Upgrading  Field  Data 


Roderick: 


Roderick: 


Riess : 


Roderick: 


In  the  article  in  Pacific  Horticulture  Herbert  Baker  also  said 
that  it  became  a  project  up  at  the  garden  to  try  to  replace 
material  —  I'd  like  to  know  how  this  works,  particularly  with  the 
California  native  section- -that  they  were  trying  to  replace 
material  of  horticultural  origins  with  corresponding  material 
from  wild  sources. 

Yes.   We  had  things  with  no  field  data  on  it  that  was  good 
either  for  show  or  for  class  material.   Then  we'd  get  wild 
materials,  plant  it  out,  and  as  soon  as  it  got  to  flowering 
size,  then  they  would  chop  out  the  plant  of  no  value. 


So,  it's  not  that  the  actual  plant  is  inferior, 
you  don't  know  the  history  of  it. 


It's  just  that 


Because  these  wild-collected  plants,  especially  if  you  have, 
say- -well,  for  instance  mostly  what  was  chopped  out  was 
Rhododendrons  in  the  rhododendron  dell.   A  lot  of  those  were 
garden  varieties.   So  what?  But,  for  instance,  now  there  are 
three,  I  think,  different  collections  of  Rhododendron  arboreum. 
maybe  one  from  way  high  in  the  mountains ,  one  from  mid- 
elevation,  maybe  one  from  the  lowest  elevation  of  its  area. 
Each  one  of  these  will  show  some  kind  of  little  different 
characters  in  it.   Hard  telling  exactly  what. 


69 


But  there  is  the  one  in  the  Rhododendron  world  that  is  very 
famous.   It's  called  a  self -topping  Rhododendron  arboreum.   It's 
a  much  smaller  grower,  undoubtedly  from  the  top  of  its 
elevation.   So,  this  could  be  historically- -or  hysterically,  I 
think  now- -important ,  because  it  is  called  a  self -topper  because 
it  doesn't  grow  very  tall. 

Riess :     Was  the  rhododendron  dell  in  your  charge? 

Roderick:   No,  no.   That  was  strictly  for  the  Dr.  Joseph  Rock  Collection. 

Plus,  there  were  lots  and  lots  of  hybrids  planted  in  there.   Now 
they've  chopped  out  almost  all  of  the  hybrids,  which  meant  that 
there's  a  lot  less  rhododendrons,  but  new  ones  are  being 
planted.   Young  ones  are  being  planted  here  and  there. 

Incidentally,  when  I  was  cleaning  out  the  old  vault  I  found 
copies  of  the  Joseph  Rock  numbers.   There  were  three  copies.   We 
kept  one  there,  I  gave  one  to  Strybing  Arboretum,  and  I  can't 
remember  now  where  the  other  one  was  sent.   It  was  sent 
someplace.   But  there  are  the  three  copies.   It  was  all  typed, 
hand- typed,  and  duplicated  from  the  old  blue  paper  you  put  in 
between,  stencil -like .   That  was,  I  think,  a  hundred  pages 
thick.   Somehow  they  had  it  clamped  together  that  way.   I 
remember  Anton  told  me  to  throw  two  of  them  away.   I  said,  "God, 
no!"   I  took  one  myself,  and  I  gave  that  to  Strybing  Arboretum. 

Riess:     But  you  couldn't  leave  one  at  the  garden  because  you  knew  it 
would  be  thrown  away? 

Roderick:   I  had  to  fight  Anton  Christ  to  keep  the  letter  I  told  you  about, 
the  letter  about  the  dawn  redwoods,  to  keep  him  from  burning 
that  up.   He  said,  "God,  they  can't  leave  that  around!"  I  said, 
"That's  history."  There  were  May  Blos's  drawings  of  nicotiana 
for  Goodspeed's  book,  The  Genus  Nicotiana. 


Horticultural  Characters^/ 


Riess:     Did  Goodspeed  come  up  to  the  garden? 

Roderick:   Setchell  I  never  met,  but  Goodspeed  used  to  come  up  there  once 
in  awhile,  and  all  the  staff  hated  him  because  of  some  of  the 
.stupid  things  that  he'd  pull.   They  always  had  a  vegetable 
garden,  and  he'd  make  the  staff  pull  up  tomato  plants  and  put 
them  on  the  table  so  he  could  pick  the  ripe  ones  off  and  then 
throw  the  rest  away.   You  know,  things  this  way. 


70 


Riess:     It  sounds  like  this  business  draws  a  lot  of  peculiar  people. 

Roderick:   In  the  horticultural  world  there  are  some  real  weirdos,  and  I 
guess  I'm  at  the  center  of  all  of  them. 

Riess:     No,  no.   You're  going  to  be  the  norm  for  all  of  this!  [laughter] 
How  about  James  West?  Did  you  ever  meet  him? 

Roderick:   I  heard  a  lot  about  him.   No,  I  never  met  him.   The  thing  I  do 
know  is  that  Art  Menzies  had  several  letters  from  him.   Now, 
where  they  are  I  don't  know.   But  West  mainly  corresponded  with 
Mrs.  Blake.   When  Mrs.  Blake  died,  all  those  letters  where  taken 
out  and  burned. 

Riess:     I  heard  that,  too. 

Roderick:   Boy,  that  would  sure  be  a  loss. 

Riess:     Burned  for  tidying-up  purposes? 

Roderick:  I  don't  know.  This  is  what  I  still  don't  know.  They  must  have 
been  in  her  garden  room  where  she  kept  her  records,  and  I  don't 
know  for  sure  who  burned  them.  But  anyhow,  they  were  burned. 

Riess:     What  is  all  this  mystery  about  James  West? 

Roderick:   Well,  he  was  a  mystery  himself.   Why  did  he  call  himself  James 

West  when  he  lived  here?  He  was  a  count  or  something  like  that. 
He  was  of  noble  birth.   When  he  went  back  to  Austria- -or  was  it 
Germany? --he  took  up  his  title  again.   But  why  did  he  call 
himself  a  completely  different  name  while  he  was  here?  He  was 
supposedly,  from  a  couple  of  pictures  I've  seen,  it  looked  like 
he  was  a  very  small  person  but  wiry.   Looked  like  he'd  be  one  of 
these  feisty  little  fellows. 

Riess:     And  a  rock  gardener. 

Roderick:   And  a  rock  gardener  and  a  cactus  nut  and  all  of  this.   He  must 
have  been  a  fascinating  person.   I  would  have  loved  to  have  met 
him. 

Riess:     I  know.   He  would  be  on  your  list  of  plant  explorers?. 

Roderick:   No.   I  stop  at  the  turn  of  the  century.   That  leaves  out  Marcus 
Jones,  one  of  the  screwiest  of  all  plant  collectors  and 
explorers. 

Riess:  How  did  you  get  money  for  your  section  over  the  years?  How  did 
you  go  back  to  the  bosses  and  say,  "I  need  more  money?" 


71 


Roderick:   Well,  I  finally  found  out  a  way  of  working  Anton  Christ,  though 
it  would  take  about  six  months.   I'd  get  a  good  idea,  and  I 
needed  some  materials,  and  I  would  get  him  out  there  and  show 
him  what  I  was  working  out,  and  would  say,  "Don't  you  think  it's 
a  good  idea?"  He  would  say,  "Well,  we  can't  afford  it,"  and, 
"Yeah,  it's  a  good  idea." 

I'd  keep  hounding  on  this  and  hounding  on  it.   I  would 
never  say  very  much,  just  a  couple  of  words  so  he  knew  back  in 
his  mind.   Finally,  after  about  six  months,  I  would  say,  "Anton, 
don't  you  remember  you  said  you  would  get  me  a  load  of  gravel  to 
start  such  and  such  a  program?"   He  would  say,  "Oh,  yes.   I'll 
go  see  about  it  right  now!"  That's  the  way  I  worked  him. 

Riess:     So  he  sort  of  knew  that  somewhere  along  the  way  he  had  said  yes, 
but  he  wasn't  sure  about  how  or  when? 

Roderick:   Yes,  but  if  you'd  come  right  out  and  ask  him,  "No  way." 


Flood  and  Frost  at  the  Garden 


Riess:     Let's  just  do  a  quick  run-down  on  disasters  in  the  garden. 
Apparently  in  1961  temperature  got  up  to  105  degrees.   That 
wouldn't  be  a  disaster  for  your  natives,  would  it? 

Roderick:   No.   The  big  disaster  of  that  period  was  the  Christmas  flood  of 
1964.   It  washed  out  whole  gullies  and  everything.   I  packed 
rocks  around  in  washouts  from  Strawberry  Creek. 

Riess:     When  it  started  happening,  you  were  there  working  day  and  night? 

Roderick:   I  tried  to  get  to  the  garden  during  the  flood  itself.   When  I 

got  up  to  about  the  swimming  pools,  these  big  rocks  were  coming 
washing  down  the  road.   I  was  able  to  get  around  a  couple  of 
them,  but  it  looked  like  the  road  was  washed  out,  and  I  didn't 
hardly  dare  to  try  to  get  around  in  that.   I  backed  up  to  the 
parking  area  where  I  could  turn  around  and  get  back  out.   I 
never  did  get  up  there  during  the  flood  itself. 

The  next  day,  when  it  went  down,  I  was  up  there,  and  from 
then  on  I  was  into  everything  helping  out- -the  native  area 
wasn't  as  badly  damaged  as  the  pond  above  Rhododendron  Dell,  and 
there  were  several  other  places,  trees  down  here  and  there  —  and 
trying  to  help  clean  up  the  messes. 


72 


Riess: 


Roderick: 


Riess: 
Roderick: 
Riess: 
Roderick; 


Then  in  December  1972  came  the  "great  freeze."   Immediately 
after  the  freeze  the  rain  came.   In  the  native  areas  it  was  the 
desert  plants  and  the  southern  California  things,  low-rainfall 
plants.   They  survived  the  frostbite  well- -yes,  their  foliage 
was  pretty  badly  damaged- -but  then  there  was  so  much  water  in 
the  ground  that  the  roots  rotted.   We  lost  quite  a  bit  from  the 
frost,  but  it  was  more  the  roots;  the  things  that  we  lost  were 
those  that  were  rotted  out,  rather  than  the  things  that  were 
frozen. 

I  thought  it  was  the  other  way  around:   that  there  was  so  much 
water  first,  and  everything  was  super-saturated.   The  cells  were 
a  hundred  percent  water.   And  then  along  came  the  freeze  and 
they  burst. 

It  could  have  been  it  rained  before.   I  can't  tell  you  that  now. 
But  it  was  the  rain  afterwards.   For  instance,  in  the  cactus 
garden,  yes,  some  of  those  great  big  five,  six,  seven- ton  plants 
were  just  melted. 

There  was  this  tall,  slender  cactus.   It  must  have  been 
fifteen  or  twenty  feet  tall,  if  not  taller,  with  arms.   There 
were  two  plants  side  by  side.   They  withstood  the  frost,  but 
then  the  super- saturated  soil  gave  away  under  them,  and  they 
fell  over.   One  six -hundred -pound  arm  was  still  left  undamaged. 
It  took  eight  of  us,  I  think  it  was,  with  heavy  pipes  and  lots 
of  burlap  to  pick  that  piece  up  and  get  it  up.   We  finally  got 
it  rooted,  and  it's  now  about  ten  feet  tall. 

That's  a  splendid  success  story. 

African  Hill  was  a  horrible  mess  after  the  big  freeze. 

So,  you  all  worked  together  on  that. 


I  was  any  place  where  they  bothered  to  push  me. 
everything. 


I  was  into 


The  South  African  plants,  I  think,  more  than  the  cactus, 
the  stench  for  weeks  was  beyond  belief  from  those  melted  plants. 
It  was  just  sickening.   It  was  such  a  horrible,  funny  stench. 
You  can't  call  it  anything  but  a  stench.   You  can't  describe  the 
odor.   It  was  not  the  stench  of  rotted  animal  flesh.   It  wasn't 
chicken  manure  or  pig  manure  or  cow  manure  stench.   It  was 
something  completely  different.   It  was  a  stench  that  you  just 
could  hardly  stand  it,  but  yet  it  was  an  interesting  and 
fascinating  odor. 


73 


Riess:     Did  they  try  to  take  the  pieces  away,  or  did  they  just  let  them 
sink  in? 

Roderick:   A  lot  of  them,  you  just  couldn't  pick  them  up,  they  were  such 

gooey  messes.   But  what  was  solid  enough  we  did  take  it  out.   At 
that  time  we  dumped  it  behind  the  barn.   Now  it's  all  hauled 
away.   At  that  time  you  just  dumped.   But  it  took  tons  of 
material  from  those  cactus. 

Riess:     It's  not  composted  now? 

Roderick:   Now,  they're  trying  to  cover  it  all  up,  and  they're  making  it 
into  the  Mexican  area. 

Riess:     I  see.   But  when  you  were  talking  about  hauling  things  away--. 

Roderick:   Yes,  they  try  to  make  wood  chips  out  of  a  lot  of  the  stuff,  but 
so  much  of  that  has  got  a  lot  of  weed  seeds  in  it,  and  we  don't 
want  any  more  of  that.   If  I  can't  pull  a  weed  before  the  seeds 
are  anywhere  near  mature,  it  goes  into  plastic  bags,  and  they 
take  it  to  the  dump. 


Mather  Redwood  Grove 


Riess:     Did  you  have  any  involvement  with  the  Mather  Grove? 

Roderick:   I  started  that!   I  kept  screeching  about  that  and  screeching 

about,  "Oh,  how  I'd  love  to  have  that,"  but  it  was  part  of  the 
Rad  [Radiation]  Lab  property.   Found  out  that  the  Rad  Lab  didn't 
want  anything  to  do  with  it.   It  took  quite  a  few  years  before 
they  put  a  fence  in  to  keep  us  undesirable  people  out  of  Rad  Lab 
country . 

Then  they  couldn't  do  anything  for  help  on  it,  to  get  help 
to  work  on  it,  but  I  got  Boy  Scouts  that  had  to  have  for  a  merit 
badge  this  stuff  about  public  improvement,  or  something  that 
way.   The  first  thing  I  had  done  was  to  break  the  dead  limbs 
off.   You  couldn't  crawl  through  there.   It  was  limbs  right  to 
the  ground . 

Riess:     You  had  the  Boy  Scouts  climb  the  trees? 

Roderick:   They  didn't  climb.   Everything  was  from  the  ground.   With  the 

pole  they  would  knock  it  out,  and  then  I'd  have  them  pile  it  all 
up.   It  was  a  horrible,  heavy  job.   It  took,  I  think,  three 


74 


different  batches  of  boys  to  do  that- -three  or  four,  something 
that  way. 

But  the  other  interesting  thing--.   Those  are  man-planted, 
but  down  at  the  head  of  the  canyon,  down  below  the  Botanical 
Garden  on  the  far  side  of  the  canyon,  there's  another  grove. 
Those  trees  were  planted  the  same  year.   The  ones  at  the  head  of 
the  canyon  are  twice  the  size  of  the  ones  that  were  in  that 
Mather  Grove.   The  fog  would  come  up  in  the  summertime  and  come 
up  into  the  grove  at  the  head  of  the  canyon,  but  the  Mather 
Grove  would  be  in  full  sun,  no  fog.   That  moisture  made  all  the 
difference.   The  ones  in  the  head  of  the  grove  dropped  all  their 
limbs,  and  you  could  walk  through  there,  while  this  one  held 
them  all. 


Riess: 


We  removed  half  the  trees  after  that.   That  cost  money,  if 
I  remember  rightly.   But  by  this  time  they  were  getting  things 
really  going.   There  was  the  little  spring:  I'd  run  that  down 
one  place.   And  the  cutest  little  part-time  spring  —  only  in  the 
wintertime- -was  where  they  made  the  amphitheater.   They  enlarged 
that,  and  the  best  trees  were  right  there.   They  had  to  take 
those  out.   But  that  was  one  of  the  ways  of  getting  money  to  do 
some  of  this  other  stuff.   Making  it  useful  to  other  parts  of 
the  campus  made  all  the  difference  in  the  world. 

Well,  there  was  a  success.   You  were  named  University  of 
California  Man  of  the  Year  in  1974.   What  was  that  award  for? 


Roderick:   I  don't  remember  why.   I  guess  it  was  because  I  furnished  class 
material.   I  don't  know,  [laughs]   I  remember  getting  that. 
It's  somewhere  around  in  this  house.   Somebody  ran  across  one  of 
those  the  other  day  and  sent  it  to  me  and  it's  laying  around 
here  somewhere.   I  forgot  all  about  it. 


"Retirement" 


Riess: 


Roderick: 


Riess: 


Now,  Wayne  Roderick,  I've  come  to  the  end  of  my  questions  about 
the  Botanical  Garden.   What  do  you  think  of  as  your  great 
achievements  there?  Is  there  anything  you'd  like  to  add? 


I  enjoyed  it. 
there . 

What  happened? 


I  wish  I  could  have  worked  till  I  retired  from 


75 


Roderick:   Well,  at  that  time  there  was  the  University  retirement  system, 
which  was  terrible,  bad,  very  poor.   If  I  had  worked  there  for 
ten  more  years  it  would  have  been  only  a  few  more  dollars  a 
month  for  retirement  pay.   If  I  went  up  to  the  Regional  Park's 
Botanic  Garden,  and  I  worked  there  only  six  years,  and  it  was 
two  hundred  dollars ,  it  was  several  times  more  than  what  I  would 
have  gotten  at  UC  at  that  time  for  retirement. 

Riess:     But  you  couldn't  negotiate  that? 

Roderick:   That  was  still  at  that  time  strictly  University  retirement. 

Finally,  about  five  years  after  I  had  left  there,  they  changed 
to  the  state  retirement  system,  which  costs  me  now  a  couple 
hundred  dollars  a  month.   I  would  have  stayed  there  except  for 
that  retirement. 

Riess:     Have  you  maintained  your  involvement  with  UC? 

Roderick:   [laughs]  I  know  where  the  keys  are.   Last  time  I  talked  with  Bob 
Ornduff  about  looking  at  his  personal  hothouse  of  bulbs.   He 
said,  "Oh,  good.   Did  you  see  this,  did  you  see  that?"  Or,  "You 
know  where  the  keys  are,  go  do  it  yourself.   Don't  bother  me." 
I  get  that  from  one  or  two  of  them  every  so  often. 

I  try  never  to  do  anything  without  the  person  knowing  what 
I'm  doing.   Most  of  the  time  it's,  "Oh,  good,  good."   It's  nice 
to  feel  good  when  I  go  there.   Like  last  Tuesday  I  went  and 
showed  my  pictures  that  I  just  took  in  Turkey,  because  they  were 
getting  seeds  and  starts  on  little  things  I  brought  back. 

Riess:     You  showed  slides? 

Roderick:   Yes,  in  the  classroom.   They  darken  it  and  they  bring  their 
lunches  and  eat  their  lunches  and  look  at  the  slides.   The 
volunteers  and  the  docents  come  in  too.   It's  so  nice.   I  saw 
two  of  the  docents  on  Tuesday  who  had  been  there  since  the  start 
of  the  docent  program.   They're  still  going  on  there  at  the 
garden  after  all  those  years. 

Riess:     When  the  docents  are  trained,  do  they  go  through  the  sections 
and  spend  a  period  of  time  with  the  head  of  each  section,  so 
that  you  would  have  had  a  few  weeks  with  them? 

Roderick:   I  haven't  been  involved  with  that  now  for  several  years,  but  I 
used  to  give  one  lecture  every  year  on  the  Indian  uses  for  that 
part  of  their  education. 


Riess: 


The  docent  program  started-- 


76 


Roderick:   --way  back.   I  can  tell  you  that  much. 

Riess:     The  decent  program  at  Strybing,  a  two-year  decent  training 
class,  started  in  1974.   But  it  was  earlier  at  UC? f 

Roderick:   No,  about  the  same  time  if  I  remember  rightly.   All  the  people 
that  have  been  involved  in  that- -the  instructors,  the  head  of 
it,  and  all  this --they  always  have  had  some  nice  people.   Though 
many  of  the  persons  that  take  the  training  never  go  on. 

Riess:     You  mean  they  do  it  for  their  own  interest? 

Roderick:   I  think  that.   I  think  now  that  you  have  to  pay  to  take  the 
training,  to  pay  for  the  instructors. 

Some  of  the  docents  are  just  so  involved  that  they  can't 
leave.   They've  got  to  go  back  and  back  and  back.   I  know 
several  persons  like  that.   Like  Tuesday  there  were  the  two 
ladies  that  went  way  back  to  the  beginning  up  there  at  UC.   One 
of  the  women  that  volunteers  part-time  up  at  Tilden,  she  can't 
come  all  the  time  because  she's  so  much  involved  with  the 
Oakland  Museum. 

Riess:     Well,  the  Botanical  Garden  sounds  like  a  wonderful  time  in  your 
life. 

Roderick:   Yes.   What  an  experience.   Your  avocation  and  vocation  are  one 
and  the  same- -to  work  with  plants,  especially  wild  plants. 

Riess:     When  you  were  up  there  you  were  also  getting  more  involved  with 
rock  gardens  and  all  the  organizations  that  you  belong  to.   Or 
did  that  come  later? 

Roderick:   I  tried  to  keep  away.   I  was  doing  too  darn  many  things,  and  I 
still  couldn't  resist  trying  to  help  out  somewhere. 


Wayne  Roderick  reading  Lester  Rowntree's  Hardy  Calif ornians .  1975. 


77 


IV  NATIVE  PLANTS 

[Interview  3:   May  31,  1990 ]//// 

Tilden  Park  Botanic  Garden.  William  Penn  Mott.  and  Friends 


Roderick:   The  California  Native  Plant  Society- -really ,  it  was  just  a  group 
of  people  trying  to  save  the  Botanic  Garden  at  Tilden  Park  from 
Mott  tearing  it  down  and  trying  to  move  it. 

Riess:      Is  that  a  fair  summary  of  William  Penn  Mott's  intention? 

Roderick:   Mott  knew  nothing  about  plant  material.    He  was  a  person  for 
recreation.   (Incidentally,  he  lives  only  two  houses  from  me, 
just  behind  you.   Thank  goodness  he's  on  another  street.)   Mott 
couldn't  control  James  Roof,  and  the  only  way  he  could  do  it  was 
to  get  rid  of  the  Botanic  Garden.   He  was  pretty  much  towards 
doing  this  when  a  whole  group  of  people- -and  I  got  involved  in 
this,  too --had  these  meetings  [in  1962]  to  save  the  garden. 

Riess:     They  called  themselves  Friends  of  the  Regional  Parks  Botanic 
Garden. 

Roderick:   Yes.   The  first  big  meeting  they  had  with  Mott  and  his  henchmen, 
we  got  Dr.  Leo  Brewer  to  start  out  with  everything.   He  got  up, 
and  he  started  in,  and  Mott  jumped  up  and  said,  "Now,  listen, 
you  have  to  make  this  very  short  because  we  are  a  very  important 
organization.  We  have  two  million  dollars  we  will  have  to  work 
with."  Leo  Brewer  said,  "Well,  then,  you'll  have  to  listen  to 
me  because  I'm  the  head  for  the  University  of  the  Science 
Foundation,  and  I  have  fourteen  million  dollars  to  work  with!" 
[laughs]   You  should  have  seen  the  air  go  out  of  Mott. 


^•William  Penn  Mott,  a  graduate  of  UC  Berkeley  in  landscape  architecture, 
was  Superintendent  of  Parks  for  Oakland,  1946-1962;  General  Manager,  East  Bay 
Regional  Parks,  1962-1967;  Director,  California  State  Department  of  Parks  and 
Recreation,  1967-1975;  and  Director,  National  Park  Service,  1985-1989. 


78 


Riess:     In  fact  that  meeting  took  place  at  Mulford  Hall,  didn't  it,  on 
the  Berkeley  campus? 

Roderick:   There  was  one  meeting  there,  and  there  was  one  up  here  at  the 
Brazilian  Room  [in  Tilden  Park].   I  think  in  1962  it  was  at 
Mulford  Hall,  and  in  1972  there  was  a  meeting  about  the  big 
freeze  up  at  the  Brazilian  Room.   Poor  Mott,  every  time  he 
opened  his  mouth  at  that  meeting  [1962]  he  got  slapped  down. 

After  that  he  became  the  head  of  the  state  parks,  and  he 
was  causing  so  much  destruction--.   I  found  his  one  dissenting 
vote  on  the  Park  Commission  and  got  him  to  give  a  lecture  to-- 
by  this  time,  it  was  the  Native  Plant  Society.   It  was  so  good 
that  everybody  else  got  him  to  come  lecture,  and  this  was  the 
one  way  we  kept  Mott  under  control  as  the  head  of  the  state 
parks . 

Riess:     What  do  you  mean  by  the  "his  one  dissenting  vote?" 

Roderick:   During  the  uprising  at  the  University  the  state  government 
decided  they  had  to  give  a  graduate  student  some  say  in 
Sacramento.   So  they  thought,  "Well,  here's  a  forestry  graduate 
student,  we'll  put  him  on  the  Park  Commission,"  not  knowing  that 
he  was  going  to  be  the  dissenting  vote  all  along.   They  didn't 
dare  to  throw  him  out.   This  young  fellow,  whose  name  was  John 
Bonickson,  he  fought  and  fought  to  try  to  keep  Mott  from 
destroying. 

For  instance,  there  was  this  big  chunk  of  land  in  the  Los 
Angeles  area,  the  last  natural  grassland  left- -I  mean  our  native 
grasses,  not  introduced- -and  Mott  wanted  to  take  it  and  make,  I 
think  it  was,  two  golf  courses,  or  else  one  golf  course  and  then 
two  recreation  areas  for  children,  swimming  pools  and  merry-go- 
rounds  and  such  things  as  this,  with  our  last  natural  grassland. 

Riess:     That  was  just  ignorance  about  native  plants? 

Roderick:   I  don't  think  Mott  knew  anything  about  plant  material,  not 

necessarily  just  about  native  plants,  but  everything  else.   He 
was  strictly  recreation.   All  he  could  think  of  was  getting 
things  for  picnic  grounds  and  things  this  way. 

Riess:     So,  in  fact,  do  you  think  that  eventually  he  came  to  appreciate 
the  role  that  CNPS  took  as  a  kind  of  gadfly?  Or  do  you  always 
think  of  him  as  an  adversary? 

Roderick:   Every  time  he  sees  me  he  turns  his  back  to  get  away  from  me  as 
fast  as  possible!   [laughs] 


79 


Riess:     How  did  this  group  of  people  get  together,  Leo  Brewer  and  so  on? 
I  know  there  were  some  splendid  people  in  the  early  days  of 
CNPS. 

Roderick:   There  were  the  Fruges  and  the  Flemings  and  the  Burrs.   They  were 
the  number  one  people,  and  they  said  it  was  such  a  good  group- - 
after  we  got  Mott  to  leave  the  Botanic  Garden  alone  and  let  it 
go  on  and  stay  in  operation- -they  said  it  was  such  a  good  group 
that  we  had,  let's  make  it  into  something  permanent  and  call  it 
the  California  Native  Plant  Society. 

Riess:     Who  pulled  them  together  in  the  first  place? 

Roderick:   I  think  you  can  say  it  was  Jim  [Roof] ,  because  he  was  close 
friends  with  the  Flemings  and  with  the  Fruges. 

Riess:     Was  this  August  Fruge? 

Roderick:   Yes.   And  then  Helen-Mar  Beard  and  I  down  at  UC.   I'm  trying  to 
think- -there' s  one  or  two  other  persons  in  on  that. 

Riess:     You  mean  in  the  founding  group? 

Roderick:   In  the  founding  group.   I  think  it  was  the  women.   I  think  it 
was  Susan  Fruge  and  Jenny  Fleming  and  Joyce  Burr  that  really 
brought  everybody  together. 

But  it  certainly  made  a  fine  group  and  made  a  good 
organization.   I'm  very  pleased  to  say  I'm  a  member  of  it. 

Riess:     In  fact  a  Fellow  of  the  California  Native  Plant  Society,  which 
is  a  great  honor. 


Ledvard  Stebbins.  and  Leadership.  CNPS 


Riess:     The  first  CNPS  president  was  Mac  [Watson]  Laetsch. 
as  director  of  the  UC  Botanical  Garden. 


You  knew  him 


Roderick:   He  was  not  very  practical.   Laetsch  tried  several  new  things  at 
the  Garden  and  most  did  not  work  well.   It  cost  the  garden 
thousands  and  thousands  of  dollars.   The  one  thing  left  of  his 
is  that  gigantic  tropical  house,  and  it's  too  tall  to  do  any 
good- -all  the  heat's  up  above.   They  put  blowers  in  there  to  try 
to  blow  the  heat  down,  but  they  still  couldn't  get  the  heat  down 
to  where  it  was  really  needed.   They  worked  it  all  over.   I 


80 


think  now  they've  got  heating  cables  in  the  soil  to  try  to  keep 
the  plants  alive. 

Riess:     But  as  president  of  the  California  Native  Plant  Society? 

Roderick:   He  was  only  a  short  time,  if  I  remember  rightly.   The  one  that 
really  brought  it  together  was  Ledyard  Stebbins.   Boy,  he  was  a 
working  fool. 

Riess:     He's  a  geneticist. 

Roderick:   Yes.   What  a  guy.   What  a  character,  too. 

Riess:     Tell  me  about  him. 

Roderick:   Most  of  the  time  he  was  so  energetic,  he  was  just  pushing 

everyone  to  get  things  going.   If  it  didn't  get  going,  boy  could 
he  throw  tantrums . 

Riess:     Ornduff  was  CNPS  president  next,  and  then  John  Sawyer. 

Roderick:   Yes.   Ornduff  was  only  for  a  very  short  time.   Sawyer  was,  I 
think,  about  three  years.   I  don't  think  that  Bob  Ornduff  was 
there  more  than  about  a  year. 

Riess:     Sounds  like  a  big  job  for  anyone. 

Roderick:   You've  got  to  figure  on,  to  do  a  good  job  of  something  that  way, 
about  twenty  hours  a  week.   I  know  because  several  of  those 
different  presidents  were  persons  I  knew  well,  and  I  know  how 
much  time  they  took.   In  fact,  the  person  in  right  now  is  a  very 
good  friend  of  mine.   Suzanne  [Schettler]  is  just  going  crazy. 
She  can't  hardly  sit  down.   She's  going  day  and  night.   Cal  Hort 
was  the  same  way.   It  takes  hours  of  time.   They  tried  to  get  me 
to  be  the  president  of  California  Horticultural  Society,  and  I 
said  no  way.   I  want  my  sleep.   You've  got  to  stay  up  until  at 
least  ten  o'clock  every  night  to  try  to  keep  up  on  these  things. 

Riess:     Can't  you  delegate? 

Roderick:   You  do  that,  but  there's  all  these  letters  that  have  to  be 
written  and  answered.   Organizations  this  way  where  you're 
spread  out  all  over  the  countryside  rather  than  just  one  little 
group,  it's  either  telephone  calls  or  writing  notes  or  letters 
to  different  ones  to  keep  them  seeing  that  everything  is  going 
correctly.   Your  committees- -you're  supposed  to  go  to  those 
meetings.   You've  got  to  figure  at  least  twenty  hours  a  week  to 
do  a  decent  job. 


81 


Riess : 
Roderick 

Riess: 
Roderick: 

Riess: 
Roderick: 


Riess: 


Roderick: 


Riess : 
Roderick: 


Yes,  I  should  think  so.   The  matter  of  having  an  executive 
director  must  keep  coming  up.   You  know,  a  paid  position. 

Now  whether  the  person  is  paid  there  in  Sacramento- -I  don't 
know. 

But  they  are  not  the  president. 

No.   The  president  is  down  on  the  Hastings  Preserve,  Suzanne 
Schettler.   I  see  her  about  once  a  month  here  in  San  Francisco, 
and  she  says  it's  a  three-hour  drive  each  way. 

Back  to  Stebbins.   Tell  me  more  about  him. 

He  has  so  many  thoughts,  it's  unbelievable,  and  he  goes  so  many 
directions  all  at  the  same  time,  I  hate  to  think  about  trying  to 
say  what  all  he  did  do  and  didn't  do.   It  wasn't  very  much  what 
he  didn't  do.   He  was  just  a  go-getter  in  every  direction  you 
can  think  of. 


Well,  think  of  some  of  those  directions, 
big  issue  for  CNPS? 


Was  raising  money  a 


I  think  that  was  before  his  time,  starting  to  really  raise  the 
money . 

I  think  it  was  Laetsch  that  got  this  Mary  Wollers  in,  and 
she  got  the  job  of  being  secretary.   They  got  an  office  and  a 
telephone,  and  all  of  a  sudden  we  found  out  that  we  were  head- 
over-heels  into  debt!   Between  the  Botanic  Garden  in  Tilden  and 
at  UC  we  got  all  of  our  surplus  plant  material  that  was  in 
containers  and  hurriedly  had  a  plant  sale  to  try  to  get  out  of 
debt. 

We  got  enough  that  first  time  to  pay  all  the  bills  that  had 
to  be  paid,  like  the  telephone  bill  and  the  rent  and  all  that. 
We  got  that  paid.   We  never  did  get  enough,  I  don't  think,  for  a 
couple  of  more  years  to  pay  off  wages. 

And  then  you  abandoned  the  idea  of  the  secretary? 

The  secretary  and  all  that  was  all  volunteer  for  a  long  time, 
until  finally  when  we  got  into  doing  an  inventory  of  the  rare 
and  endangered  plants  [An  Inventory  of  the  Rare  and  Endangered 
Plants  of  California!  we  had  to  have  a  botanist,  and  that  is 
still  our  only  paid  person. 

Exactly  when  they  started  making  these  posters  of  the 
wildf lowers- -.   That  has  really  made  a  lot  of  money  and  is  what 


82 


Riess: 


Roderick: 


Riess: 


has  kept  the  organization  financially  in  very  good  shape  for 
paying  our  botanist.   And,  of  course,  now  we  have  to  pay  office 
space  and  so  forth  up  in  Sacramento. 

The  reason  we  went  to  Sacramento  is  because  we  got  so 
politically  powerful  on  saving  plants  that  the  state  wants  us  to 
help  them  out  on  seeing  about,  like,  making  new  highways.   Are 
they  going  to  go  through  a  rare  plant  area?  Things  like  that. 

Is  it  the  state  that  wants  you,  or  have  you  become  so  much  of  a 
presence  that  they  hardly  dare  proceed  without  you? 

It's  probably  our  presence.   They  have  been  quite  nice  trying  to 
help  out  and  make  certain  that  important  places  in  the  state--. 

Because  the  voice  of  the  combined  CNPS  membership  would  be  very 
loud? 


Roderick: 

Riess: 

Roderick: 


Riess: 


Roderick: 


Riess: 


Roderick: 


Yes. 

How  has  it  expanded?   It  started  out  as  a  Bay  Area  group. 

Yes.   There's  something  like  twenty -seven  or  twenty -eight 
chapters  now  throughout  the  state.   Some  of  them  are  very 
important;  some  of  them  are  still  just,  more  or  less,  a  little 
organization  being  a  bunch  of  friends  and  having  a  good  time. 


Did  Stebbins  go  into  the  hinterlands  and  create  new  groups? 
did  new  groups  form? 


How 


Riess: 


I  can't  quite  tell  you  so  much  on  that.   But  it  was  Stebbins 
that  went  ahead  and  really--.   He  went  all  over  the  state 
lecturing,  and  with  his  energetic  personality,  people  couldn't 
say  no!   "Yes,  we've  got  to  jump  on  the  bandwagon  right  now!" 
you  know.   I  think  it  was  just  his  energetic  ways  that  got  the 
organization  really  going. 

He  was  president  from  '66  through  '72,  and  also  he  was  in  the  UC 
Davis  Genetics  Department.   I  guess  he  was  only  able  to  give  a 
small  portion  of  his  time  to  the  Native  Plant  Society. 

His  little,  small  portion  was  like  a  full  time  on  anybody  else. 
You  can't  believe  what  that  gentleman  could  do!   I  have  seen  him 
twice  throw  tantrums.   One  time  I  was  a  little  bit  disgusted, 
but  it  was  because  he  was  giving  a  lecture  and  the  projectors-- 
I  think  it  took  the  third  one  before  he  got  one  going.   And  he 
was  very  much  upset. 

Had  you  known  him  before  the  native  plant  group? 


83 


Roderick:   Slightly.   I  knew  him  as  Professor  Stebbins.   I  didn't  know  him 
personally.   I  knew  him  as  soon  as  I  saw  him,  you  know.   Then, 
when  he  took  over,  I  wondered,  "My  God,  how  is  that  guy  going  to 
ever  give  any  time?"   Especially  living  up  there.   But  what  a 
dynamo ! 


Inventory  of  Rare  and  Endangered  Plants  of  California 


Riess:     How  did  the  rare  and  endangered  plant  survey  come  about? 

Roderick:   They  had  this  great  big  meeting  up  at  Davis  that  I  was  brought 
in  on,  too,  on  the  rare  plants,  and  where  they  were,  and  what 
you  thought  of  this  one,  or  is  that  too  common?  and  things  this 
way.   It  was  a  whole  weekend.   I  think  there  were  about  a 
hundred,  hundred- and- fifty  people  that  were  working  on  that. 
Piles  and  piles  of  maps.   We  took  over  the  whole  ground  floor  of 
one  big  building.  We  took  all  the  classrooms.   It  was  that  many 
people . 

Riess :     What  kind  of  people  were  brought  in?  You  were  a  natural  because 
you  were  out  in  the  field  from  year  to  year,  and  you  could  see 
populations  of  plants  diminishing  or  whatever.   What  other 
people? 

Roderick:   It  was  surprising.   A  lot  of  graduate  students.   Lots  and  lots 

of  botanists  from  all  over  the  state.   This  is  how  I  got  to  meet 
some  of  these  other  people  around  and  became  friends  with  them 
all  in  one  place.   We  ate  together  and  took  over  one  of  the 
dormitories.   We  really  took  over  that  whole  campus, 
practically. 

Riess:     The  task  was  to  make  a  list  of  plants  that  were  rare? 

Roderick:   They  started  in  from  that.   They  had  maps.   We  plotted  them  out 
on  maps .   Maybe  four  or  five  people  would  come  and  put  their 
knowledge  in  on  one  species  of  a  plant:   "Oh  no,  I  don't  know  it 
there,  but  I  know  it  over  here."  That  was  the  basis. 

Riess:     Did  those  botanists  have  maps  in  their  heads?  Or  do  they  carry 
around  maps  marked  with  finds? 

Roderick:   A  few  had  a  little  bit  maybe  of  that,  but  mostly  it  was  what 
thly  had  in  their  brain. 

Riess:     Where  do  you  keep  your  information,  Wayne? 

i 


84 


Roderick:   I  have  stacks  of  maps  to  go  look  at,  but  I  can  remember,  and  I 
have  certain  places  that  I  keep  going  back  to  year  after  year 
after  year.   In  a  little  over  a  week  I'm  going  to  go  up  to  Modoc 
County  if  the  weather  improves.   I  haven't  been  up  there  for 
years,  but  I  bet  I  can  find  some  of  those  places  I  always v 
thought  were  so  nice . 

Riess:     You  don't  keep  notes? 

Roderick:   I  lose  them.   I  can't  keep  them!   I  lose  them.   I've  lost  one 
address  of  a  letter  that  I  desperately  need  to  write.   These 
people  asked  for  information  while  I  was  in  Europe  this  spring. 
When  I  came  home,  I  found  their  letter.   I  finally  sat  down  and 
took  time  to  write  to  them- -they  are  in  Australia.   I'm  not  sure 
what  I  did  wrong,  but  anyhow,  the  letter  came  back.   It  took  six 
weeks  for  it  to  get  back!   And  I  had  thrown  their  letter  away-- 
the  original.   So  now  I  don't  know  what  was  wrong. 

Riess:     When  you  got  together  with  this  group  up  in  Davis  and  started  on 
the  inventory,  was  there  any  discussion  then  on  the  ethics  of 
plant  and  seed  collecting?  How  has  that  changed  over  the  years? 

Roderick:   When  I  started  out  I  just  collected,  for  the  very  first  three  or 
four  months,  indiscriminately. 

Riess:     You  mean  you'd  actually  take  plants? 

Roderick:   I'd  take  plants  and  seed,  however  I  could  get  it.   There  was  so 
little  at  the  University  at  that  time.   Then  I  got  to  the  place 
where  I'd  be  much  more  careful,  collect  at  a  time  I  knew  would 
be  good  to  collect,  and  collect  preferably  cuttings  and  seeds. 
Plants- -especially  at  the  edge  of  desert  or  something  that  way, 
there's  very  little  chance  of  digging  a  plant  and  getting  it  to 
grow.   It's  much  better  to  start  with  seed  and  get  it  adapted  to 
our  climate  from  the  start  and  hope  that  they're  going  to  make 
it. 

The  more  I  went,  the  longer  I  went,  the  more  careful  I 
became  as  to  what  I  collected,  and  making  certain- -trying  to 
round  out  a  collection.   Get  your  trees,  the  main  understory  or 
edge  of  that,  and  then  the  little  perennials  and  small  plants 
that  grew  underneath  everything.   But  mainly  at  UC  I  still  tried 
to  collect  things  that  were  best  for  class  material. 

Riess:     You're  contrasting  that  with  what  you  did  at  the  Regional  Parks, 
where  you  were  creating  a  whole  plant  community. 


85 


Roderick:   Yes.   Jim  Roof  was  only  mostly  interested  in  woody  plants.   I 

started  in  trying  to  collect  the  other  plants  that  would  fit  in 
with  what  was  already  in  the  garden. 

Riess:      He  had  all  those  manzanitas  and  trees. 

Roderick:   Yes,  the  greatest  collection  at  that  time  of  manzanitas.   And 

you  looked  under  the  manzanitas  and  there  was  nothing!   I  wanted 

to  bring  in  all  the  things  that  would  blend  in  and  make  it  more 
of  a  natural -looking  area. 


Propagating  the  Rare  and  Endangered 


Riess:  At  the  Botanic  Garden  there  are  some  rare  and  endangered  plants. 
Not  only  do  the  labels  say  as  much,  but  they  say  where  they  were 
collected  from.  I  don't  understand  the  thinking  behind  this. 

Roderick:   Always  on  those  labels,  where  it  was  collected  could  be  such  a 
wide  area,  there  was  no  way  anybody  could  find  the  plants. 

But  it's  turning  out  that  one  of  the  greatest  things  that 
has  ever  happened  was  the  collecting  of  these  rare  and 
endangered  plants,  some  of  them  now  extinct  in  the  wild,  two  of 
which  have  been  propagated  by  Tilden  and  have  been  planted  back 
out  where  they  had  originally  been  found.   We've  got  up  there,  I 
think  it  is,  about  a  hundred- and- fifty  rare  and  endangered 
plants.   There  are  about  five  or  six  that  are  extinct  now  in  the 
wild. 

Riess:     With  your  volunteers  you  are  able  to  propagate  them? 

Roderick:   The  volunteers  don't  do  much  that  way.   What  they  do  is 
propagate  for  selling. 

It  is  amazing  how  many  people  want  to  take  and  get  some  of 
these  rare  and  endangered  plants.   We  tried  for  awhile  to  get 
people  to  register  before  they  could  take  one  or  buy  one  of 
them.   It's  surprising  how  many  people  were  able  to  do  that. 
Unfortunately,  when  they  took  them  home  some  of  these  were 
planted  in  good  spots,  but  others  would  have  water  coming  off 
from,  say,  neighbors'  places  or  from  sidewalks  and  roofs,  and 
would  drown  out  a  lot  of  these.   Or  else  they'd  grow  too  big  for 
the  person.   That  did  not  prove  too  satisfactory.   We  just  keep 
trying  now  to  propagate .  We  always  keep  one  or  two  back  as  a 
reserve  in  case  something  happens  to  the  parent  plant. 


86 


We're  trying  more  and  more  to  go  to  cuttings  or  seed.  It's 
so  much  easier.  You  don't  do  any  damage  that  you  can  see  to  the 
rare  plant.  When  I'm  out  collecting  seed  or  cuttings,  or  if  I 
dig  a  plant  or  two,  I  try  never  to  take  more  than  one  percent  of 
the  seed,  or  whatever  it  is.  That  way  you  know  you  can't  do  any 
damage . 

Riess:     When  you  were  first  thinking  about  the  rare  plant  inventory 

project,  was  the  intention  to  do  anything  more  than  identify? 

Roderick:   Yes,  because  that  main,  big  meeting  was  to  not  only  identify, 
but  to  place  on  the  maps --these  piles  and  piles  of  maps  that 
they  had,  geological  maps- -the  precise  location  of  these.   That 
was  to  be  kept  by  the  society.   I  think  that  they  were  going  to 
make  maps  to  send  out  to  the  state  and  things  this  way. 

I  think  they  sent  sets  of  maps  to  several  organizations, 
and  with  the  bulk  we  could  see  it  was  getting  into  unbelievable 
expense.   So  that's  when  they  started  to  publish  the  book  on  the 
rare  and  endangered.   That  way,  other  organizations  could  look 
up  on  their  own,  and  then  they  could  get  their  own  maps  and 
pinpoint  these  plants  that  had  to  be  watched. 

Riess:     That  was  the  idea:  to  watch  the  plants,  to  make  sure  that  they 
were  not  decreasing,  to  make  sure  that  road  cuts  didn't  go 
through . 

Roderick:   Or  houses  built  on  them. 

Riess:     But  it  was  never  to  propagate  and  increase? 

Roderick:   No.   That  has  been  more  the  Botanic  Garden.   Now,  I  can't  tell 

you  about  the  whole  state.   But  at  UC  and  Tilden,  both  of  us  try 
to  have  a  lot  of  these  rare  plants .   We  also  take  and  look  for 
good  horticultural  plants,  too,  and  that's  what  we  start  to 
propagate  and  to  sell.   Or,  for  instance,  we  give  to  nurseries 
to  propagate. 

Riess:     You  talk  about  using  those  maps  for  your  lobbying  purposes. 
That  brings  up  the  whole  question  of  preserves. 

Roderick:   And  it  works  a  great  deal  with  Nature  Conservancy.   They, 
though,  are  trying  to  get  big  tracts  of  land,  and  not  only 
plants  but  animals  and  birds- -anything  that's  being  endangered. 
The  Conservancy  and  the  Native  Plant  Society  have  worked  quite 
closely  together. 

Riess:     The  Conservancy  did  a  California  survey  too. 


87 


Roderick:   Yes.   I  think  most  of  it  is  based  on  our  survey.   But  they  have 
to  look  at  something  quite  a  bit  different.   They  don't  just 
look  at  plants.   They  look  at  everything. 


Inventory  of  California  Natural  Areas 


Riess:     The  CNPS  also  did  an  inventory  of  California  natural  areas. 
What  was  that? 

Roderick:   Les  [Leslie]  Hood  was  the  one  that  was  over  that.   It  was  taking 
in  a  lot  to  do  with  the  animals,  the  fauna  as  well  as  the  flora. 
It  got  down  to  just  a  few  persons  where  they  could  work  closely 
together  and  figure  this  out.   It  has  been  finished.   I  have 
seen  a  couple  of  the  books.   I  think  it's  in  ten  or  twelve  books 
on  these  areas.   Exactly  where  and  how  that  is  going  on,  I  don't 
know.   It  is  very  expensive  to  buy  the  set  of  books.   It  was 
more  done  for  counties  and  for  the  state  —  the  state  highways- - 
more  that  way  than  it  was  for  the  average  person. 

Riess:     They  are  paid  by  the  state  to  do  these  projects,  then? 

Roderick:   Some,  yes.   There  was  some  of  the  license  plate  money.   But  I 
can't  tell  you  too  much,  because  I  got,  more  or  less,  out.   I 
got  so  involved  when  I  got  there  at  Tilden,  when  I  started  to 
work  there,  that  I  couldn't  do  a  lot  of  this  stuff.   I  went  to 
work  at  six  in  the  morning  and  then  I'd  come  home  early  in  the 
afternoon  where  it  was  quiet.   I'd  sit  down  with  some  of  these 
papers  I  had  to  try  to  keep  up  on.   But  my  main  thing  was  trying 
to  figure  out  how  to  get  the  Tilden  out  of  chaotic  conditions . 
I  just  couldn't  think  good  enough  to  be  of  any  help  to  other 
people . 

Riess:     I  want  to  come  back  to  Tilden,  but  let  me  just  continue  to  check 
off  a  couple  more  of  these  projects  where  I  think  you  might  have 
been  involved.   Putting  together  The  Inventory  of  California 
Natural  Areas .  was  that  what  led  to  discovering  such  things  as 
vernal  pools,  Boggs  Lake? 

Roderick:   Of  course,  we  all  knew  that  vernal  pools  were  so  unique  to  this 
part  of  the  world  that  we  all  kept  thinking  on  vernal  pools  all 
the  time.   In  fact,  I  think  I  wrote  the  first  article  on  how  to 
grow  vernal  pool  plants  and  how  the  seeds  germinated  and  so 
forth.   Nobody  had  ever  tried,  and  I  did. 

I  was  just  like  everybody  else:   we  knew  about  these  vernal 
pools;  we  knew  that  the  biggest  share  of  them  had  already  been 


88 


plowed  up  and  destroyed  and  built  on,  or  things  that  way.   I 
think  what  was  right  on  the  back  of  everybody's  mind  was  vernal 
pools!   Vernal  pools!   "We've  got  to  do  something!" 

Riess:     Actually,  as  you  say  that,  it  seems  obviously  very  important  to 
enlist  the  interest  of  farmers  in  the  Native  Plant  Society.   Has 
that  happened? 

Roderick:   A  lot  of  farmers.   But  still,  a  lot  of  the  farmers  —  most  of  them 
have  this  land  that  has  already  been  destroyed  or  plowed,  and 
they  can't  see  it. 

//# 

Roderick:   A  lot  of  the  farmers  can  see  all  of  this,  and  if  they  do  have  a 

spot  that  hasn't  been  ever  touched,  and  there  is  something 

unusual  on  it,  most  of  them  are  very  happy  to  take  and  protect 
what  they  do  have. 

Riess:     Are  taxes  mitigated  on  those  areas  for  people  who  are  taking 
something  out  of  cultivation  to  save  the  plants? 

Roderick:   I  think  there's  something  on  that,  but  I  haven't  followed  that. 
Riess:     It's  interesting- -all  the  ramifications. 

Roderick:   When  I  retired  I  just  kind  of  lost  touch  with  some  of  these 
things  and  have  never  gotten  back  into  them. 

Riess:     It  sounds  like  you  don't  need  to;  there's  so  much  enthusiasm  for 
native  plants  now. 

Roderick:   Oh,  boy,  there's  a  lot.   And  it  is  amazing  how  so  many  of  the 

farmers  do  try  to  cooperate.   Yes,  you  do  find  one  that  is  just 
absolutely  the  opposite,  who  will  say  that  it  is  one  of  the  most 
horrible  organizations  that  ever  was,  and  all  this.   For 
instance,  one  area  south  of  Livermore  that  we  go  to  a  lot, 
there's  some  rare  plant,  and  this  one  fellow  bought  the 
property,  and  you  can't  believe  how  mean  he  is.   He'll  kill:  "If 
I  catch  you  on  my  property,  I'll  shoot!" 

Riess:     He  wouldn't  even  allow  you  to  dig  up  the  plants  and  remove  them 
to  save  them? 

Roderick:   We've  tried.   It  doesn't  like  to  be  moved.   It  is  very 

restricted  as  to  its  soil.   I  even  brought  the  soil  in,  and  I 
can't  make  it  happy.   And  if  I  can't  make  a  plant  happy- - 

Riess:     Who  can?  [laughs] 


89 


Roderick:   But  this  guy,  he  doesn't  give  a  damn.   He  says,  "My  property, 
and  I  don't  want  anybody  on  my  property." 


Collecting  on  Public  Lands 


Riess:     Have  you  worked  with  the  Bureau  of  Land  Management  in  these 
efforts? 

Roderick:   Way  back  I  used  to  try  to,  and  they  were  just  so  uncooperative. 
But  now  they  are  making  quite  an  about-face.   I  haven't  really 
gotten  too  far  involved. 

Way  back  I  got  in  bad  with  the  Forest  Service.   Boy,  I'm 
telling  you,  did  they  ever  stop  me  from  trying  to  ever  go  on 
Forest  Service  land  for  collecting! 

Riess:     How  did  you  actually  alienate  them? 

Roderick:  Up  in  Siskiyou  County  there  was  a  proposed  wilderness  area 
called  Red  Buttes.  All  of  a  sudden  the  Forest  Service  was 
having  a  secret  clear-cut  sale  on  what  was  called  Thompson 
Creek,  which  headwatered  on  Red  Butte.  I  heard  about  this  and  I 
wrote  a  dirty  letter  and  got  it  in  there  the  day  before,  I 
guess,  the  secret  clear-cut  sale. 

Riess:     You  wrote  to  the  State  Department  of  Forestry? 

Roderick:   I  wrote  to  the  [United  States]  Forest  Service  headquarters  in 

San  Francisco.   Right  away  after  this  I  had  to  have  my  botanical 
collecting  permit  renewed.   I  had  to  give  them  in  advance  what  I 
wanted  to  collect,  precisely  the  plant,  the  precise  location, 
the  precise  day,  and  so  forth,  and  they  might  give  me  a  permit. 

Riess:     Harassment. 

Roderick:   Yes.   From  then  on,  yes.   I  have  collected  some  small  amounts 
that  nobody  ever  sees.   And  I've  always  been  careful  trying  to 
cover  up  my  digging,  if  I'm  doing  any  digging.   I  just  keep  out 
of  sight. 

Riess:     That  sounds  like  you  were  being  threatened  personally.   Did  it 
ever  get  down  to  a  situation  where  you  had  to  come  in  late  at 
night  with  a  flashlight? 


90 


Roderick: 


Riess: 


Roderick 


Oh  no,  no.   I  don't  ever  go  to  that  extreme  of  collecting.   Of 
course,  I  love  collecting  seed. 

Another  plant  collecting  opportunity,  I  understand,  is  plant 
salvage  at  cemeteries,  or  at  new  bridge  sites. 

I  had  only  ever  gotten  in  one  time  that  way,  and  I  can't  even 
remember  now  where  it  got  started.   But  it  was  down  at 
Vandenburg  Air  Force  Base.   They  were  extending  the  landing  for 
the  shuttle.   Yes,  we  did  collect  there.   It  wasn't  a  good  time 
of  the  year.   Most  of  the  things  that  I  was  interested  in  trying 
to  salvage,  it  was  the  wrong  time  for  them.   It  was  more  summer, 
and  you  needed,  really,  wintertime. 

We  did  collect  some  stuff  that  we  grew.   Unfortunately,  the 
one  plant  that  was  rare  was  a  very  weedy  thing,  and  the  flower 
was  zero  on  it.   I  kind  of  got  out  of  sight  and  collected  a 
couple  of  other  things  that  were  desirable  for  a  botanic  garden. 
[ laughs ] 

Generally  speaking,  in  collecting  things,  three  plants --if 
you  can't  get  one  plant  to  grow  out  of  three,  you  can't  get  a 
hundred  to  grow.   There's  no  sense  in  taking  the  whole  quantity. 

That  goes  back  to  my  original  question:  were  rules  for  the  game 
hammered  out  by  CNPS?  Was  that  something  you  would  talk  about 
in  the  meetings? 

Once  in  awhile  that  was  talked  out,  but  with  myself  I  still 
maintain  that  if  you  can't  get  one  plant  to  grow  out  of  three 
there's  no  sense  in  going  on. 

Jim  Roof,  he  did  not  know  how  to  collect.   He  did  not  get 
very  many  things  to  grow  well.   For  instance,  collecting 
manzanita  seedlings,  instead  of  going  real  deep  to  get  the  root 
where  it's  down  trying  to  get  to  moisture,  he'd  just  go  down 
three  or  four  inches  at  the  most  and  cut  off  99  percent  of  the 
roots.   He  didn't  get  very  many  to  take.   I  only  lost  a  few. 
Again,  manzanitas  are  so  easy  from  cuttings,  and  you  can  get 
better  results  and  a  better- looking  plant. 

Riess:     Why  would  you  get  a  better- looking  plant  from  cuttings? 


Riess: 


Roderick: 


Roderick: 


Because  you  can  get  a  straight  trunk  on  it.   The  seedlings  are 
all  twisted  and  gnarled.   I  found  that  quite  often  from  the 
seedlings  I  would  get  weight  all  on  one  side,  and  eventually 
they  get  into  undesirable  soils,  the  roots  stay  rather  shallow, 
and  quite  often  they  fall  over  after  they  get  good  size. 
Cuttings  are  so  much  easier  and  better. 


91 


Horticultural  Value  of  Native  Plants 


Riess:     When  CNPS  got  started  was  also  a  time  that  we  started  being 
aware  in  California  of  the  need  for  planting  natives  to  save 
water.   Which  came  first?  A  consciousness  about  water 
preservation,  or  about  plant  preservation?  How  do  you  think 
they  worked  together? 

Roderick:   There  were  a  couple  of  native  plant  nurseries  that  were  in- -one 
of  them  I  know  for  certain  was  in  operation  by  1955,  I'd  say. 
This  fellow  had  a  garden  all  of  California  natives. 

Riess:     Who  was  that? 

Roderick:  That  was  Louis  Edmonds  out  in  Danville.  When  he  really  started 
I  have  no  way  of  knowing,  but  he's  from  way  back.  He  was  quite 
well  known,  and  people  were  interested. 

When  my  family  had  the  nursery  in  the  late  forties  and 
fifties,  we  always  carried  a  few  native  plants. 

Were  you  carrying  them  because  you  knew  that  water  was  a 
problem? 

West  of  Petaluma  and  Two  Rock  Valley  has  little  water,  and  this 
area  should  have  dry  gardens.   We  tried  to  encourage  people  to 
use  a  lot  of  these  drought- tolerant  plants.   But  this  one  woman, 
especially,  she  hauled  water  to  water  her  cattle,  but  still,  she 
wanted  roses  and  a  little  bit  of  lawn.   Couldn't  get  it  over  to 
her  to  plant  the  more  drought- tolerant  things. 

Riess:     Is  that  one  intention  in  the  native  plants  section  of  the 

botanic  gardens  at  Tilden  and  UC,  to  show  people  that  it  is 
possible  to  have  a  flowery  environment  while  working  with  native 
and  drought -tolerant  plants?   Is  that  the  underlying  intention? 

Roderick:   We  like  to  take  and  show  people  that  we  do  have  some  very 

interesting  plant  material.   But  we  all  are  watching  for  plants 
that  are  very  desirable  for  garden  plants.   Over  at  UC,  Roger 
Raiche  has  brought  in  quite  a  few  things  that  are  now  becoming 
popular  for  nurserymen  to  start  propagating.   We've  turned  out 
several  at  Tilden,  and  we're  going  to  be  giving  out  cuttings 
this  fall  of  another,  a  Fremontia  that  we  think  is  good  enough 
that  we're  going  to  give  it  a  clonal  name  and  give  out  cuttings. 


Riess : 


Roderick 


92 


Riess:     I  noticed  that  there  is  a  big  push  now  for  Mimulas . 

Roderick:   Yes.   That  was  from  a  Mr.  Verity  down  at  UCLA  that  spent  a 

lifetime  hybridizing.   I  think  he  took  some  of  Victor  Reiter's 
original  hybrids  and  worked  with  them,  plus  the  wild  ones.   The 
only  thing  wrong  with  those  is  that  they  are  rather  short 
lived,  the  ones  that  he  produced.   They  are  quite  susceptible  to 
root  rots.   I  think  it's  because  he  grew  them  only  in  sand, 
granitic  sand- -sharp,  sharp  drainage.   He  never  had  any  problems 
with  the  root  fungus.   I  think  this  is  why  they  are  a  little  on 
the  weak  side.   It's  because  of  that.   Still,  eliminating  the 
ones  that  are,  planting  them  in  heavier  soil,  if  they  were 
susceptible  to  root  fungus  they  would  hurry  up  and  die. 

Riess:     That  kind  of  pathology  work- -is  that  part  of  your  work? 

Roderick:   These  are  some  of  the  things  that  you  have  got  to  watch  out  for, 
because  most  gardens  are  in  heavier  soils.   Almost  all  the  good 
plants,  native  plants,  are  in  very  well-drained  stuff.   This  is 
how  come  so  many  of  our  better  Ceanothus  come  from  Rancho  Santa 
Ana  Botanic  Garden,  because  where  they  planted  most  of  this 
stuff  was  in  the  clayey  soil,  and  what  survived  were  the  ones 
that  were  adaptable  or,  I  guess  you  could  say,  resistant  to 
fungus.   These  are  some  of  the  things  that  a  lot  of  people  have 
not  watched  out  for. 

Riess:     You  mean  people  at  the  botanic  gardens? 

Roderick:   Yes.   And  we  found  this  one  Fremontia  that  seems  to  be  standing 
up  to  fungus  with  no  problem  and  low  and  mounding  and  easy  to 
grow.   So  instead  of  being  a  big  tree  it's  going  to  be  a  small 
garden  plant. 

Riess:     It's  not  Fremontodendron? 

Roderick:   It's  a  Fremontodendron.   It's  one  of  the  decumbens .  but  instead 
of  being  very,  very  hairy- -fuzzy,  you  could  say- -this  is  almost 
glabrous.   Cuttings  have  been  rooted  in  the  spring.   You  always 
say  "only  in  the  fall,"  but  these  were  rooted  in  the  spring.   So 
we  think  it's  got  good  possibilities. 

Riess:     The  fact  that  you  say  "we  think"  reminds  me  that  you  are  really 
not  in  the  least  bit  retired.   You're  not  supposed  to  be 
thinking  still!   You  retired  in  1983!  [laughs] 

Roderick:   I  tell  people  I'm  retarded.   I'm  too  stupid  to  stop!  [laugh] 


93 


Saving  Natural  Areas 


Riess:     In  your  vita  you  say  that  you've  been  involved  in  making  a 
couple  of  areas  into  preserves.   We've  been  talking  about 
identifying  all  of  these  precious  natural  areas  in  California. 
What  have  you  been  involved  in? 

Roderick:   Again,  the  Forest  Service  doesn't  like  me  very  well.   Up  in  the 
Siskiyou  Mountains  there  was  the  Cook  and  Green  Pass.   (I've 
always  wanted  to  know  who  Cook  and  Green  were ,  but  I  never  have 
found  out.)   I  kept  seeing  this  on  maps. 

I  was  with  Margaret  and  Loring  Williams  and  Art  Menzies  the 
first  time.   Margaret  had  been  to  England  in  '61  to  the 
International  Rock  Garden  Society  conference,  and  somebody  asked 
her  to  find  a  certain  form  of  Cassiope  martensiana.   She  found 
that  it  had  been  collected  on  Mount  Eddy,  in  the  Mount  Shasta 
area. 

Riess:     Tell  me  who  Margaret  Williams  is. 

Roderick:   Margaret  is  an  amateur  botanist,  I  guess  you  can  say,  and  a  good 
horticulturist  up  in  the  Reno  area.   In  fact,  she's  the  one  who 
wrote  The  Rare  and  Endangered  Plants  of  Nevada.   When  I  go  up  to 
the  mountains  in  that  part  of  the  Sierra  I  go  to  Reno  and  stay 
with  her. 

Anyway,  we  went  up  there,  and  we  found  out  that  there  was  a 
road.   No  cars  had  gone  on  it  for  years.   A  four-wheel  drive 
once  in  awhile  got  up  there.   Well,  I  ruined  a  wheel,  but  we  got 
up  there.   We  found  out  we  were  in  the  wrong  place.   It  was  too 
hot  and  dry  where  the  road  ended.   I  kept  talking  about  this 
place  called  Cook  and  Green,  I  wanted  to  go  see  it.   So  we  went 
and  looked  it  up  afterwards .   Turned  out  to  be  far  more 
interesting  than  we  ever  had  dreamed  about.   I  kept  after  that. 

Finally  went  up  there  one  year,  and  here  was  a  big  sign 
saying  that  what  trees  were  there  were  going  to  be  logged  off, 
most  of  them  not  usable,  they  were  so  gnarled  and  twisted  and 
deformed  from  bad  soils,  and  then  they  were  going  to  plant 
trees.   Well,  they'd  have  to  wipe  out  the  whole  area- -a  lot  of 
interesting  plants,  some  of  them  rather  rare.   By  this  time  the 
CNPS  was  already  started.   We  got  Ledyard  and  a  whole  bunch  of 
botanists  to  go  up  there  and  look  around.   They  flipped  over  the 
area  and  started  to  write  letters,  and  we  got  that  stopped. 


94 


Riess: 


Let's  see,  there  was  one  other  place.   Then  eventually, 
again  near  Mount  Eddy,  was  this  place  called  Cedar  Lake.   In 
this  area  it's  the  Port  Orford  cedar,  as  it's  commonly  called— 
Lawson  Cypress.   Found  out  a  big  clear  cut  sale  was  gping  to  be 
on  a  side  of  Mount  Eddy.   Then  a  mile  corridor  and  a  square  mile 
at  the  end  of  that  was  to  be  logged  for  these  Port  Orford 
cedars .   And  not  for  us :  they  were  to  be  logged  and  sent  to 
Japan  for  repair  of  the  old  shrines,  the  ancient  shrines. 

I  decided,  "To  heck  with  Japan  and  their  shrines.   They  can 
use  something  else."  These  are  the  only  Port  Orford  cedars -- 
they  are  way  out  of  place,  and  not  diseased.   I  said  that  this 
should  be  preserved.   Not  only  that,  but  around  this  little 
Cedar  Lake  there  are  seven  genera—not  species,  genera  —  of 
ericaceous  plants  and  a  big  bog  of  Darlingtonias ,  the  cobra 
plants. 

My  letter  put  the  monkey  wrench  in  the  gears  for  that, 
[laughs]   There  were  enough  other  people  screaming  about  that, 
and  I  got  John  Sawyer  to  write  the  letter  that  really  did  the 
work.   He  was  supposedly  such  a  brilliant  botanist,  but  he  said, 
"Seven  genera?  That's  a  common  thing!"   I  still  can't  believe 
that  anybody  could  be  that  naive.   But  anyhow,  he  wrote  the 
letter  that  this  was  a  genetic  pool  that  should  be  saved  for  the 
future.   That  was  enough  to  make  the  Forest  Service  stand  up  and 
take  notice.   They  have  set  that  aside  now,  and  it  is  going  to 
be  a  preserve  for  a  certain  area. 

Also,  it  was  Margaret  Williams  that  showed  me  Winnemucca 
Lake  up  off  of  Carson  Pass.   I  took  lots  and  lots  of  different 
groups  up  there  and  showed  them  this  area.   That  now  is  more  or 
less  of  a  preserve.   There's  something  else  I  got  my  nose  into. 
I  can't  remember  now  what  it  was. 

It  sounds  like  you  didn't  meet  with  a  lot  of  strenuous 
opposition. 


Roderick:  Most  of  the  time,  no. 

Riess:     That's  good.   You're  not  welcome  in  Japan  anymore,  probably, 
because  of  the  shrines  [laughs]. 

Roderick:   I  don't  know,  because  I  didn't  say  "darn";  I  used  quite  strong 
language.   They  can  use  other  timbers. 

Since  all  of  this  went  on  about  these  Port  Orford  cedars  in 
Del  Norte  County,  and  also  a  little  bit  of  Siskiyou,  the 
government  now  has  gone  through  and  chopped  down  every  last  Port 


95 


Orford  cedar  in  the  surrounding  diseased  area  to  stop  the  fungus 
from  getting  to  Cedar  Lake  and  affecting  those  trees.   They  were 
trying  to  make  a  wider  place.   It  was  about  a  hundred  miles,  and 
they  were  trying  to  make  a  wider  place  to  make  certain  that  we 
don't  lose  those  trees,  because  we're  going  to  have  to  get  seeds 
from  there  to  reforest  all  of  western  Oregon  and  northern 
California. 

Riess:     Fascinating,  really.   That  reminds  me  of  what  I  read  about 

something  called  the  "Franciscan  strategy"  of  collecting.   That 
was  James  Roof's  notion?  You  collect  from  the  fringe  of  an  area 
so  that  you're  collecting  specimens- -"resulting  in  a  collection 
that  features  more  plants  now  rare  or  extinct  in  their  native 
habitats."   (You  should  be  explaining  this  to  me!)   Also  there 
was  the  idea  of  collecting  plants  at  the  southern  limit  of  their 
range  to  have  those  genetically  better  adapted  to  warmer 
conditions . 

Roderick:   Things  that  are  coming  down  from  the  north.   Things  that  come 

from  the  south,  southern  plants,  you  collect  from  their  northern 
edge  to  try  to  get  them  more  adapted  to  our  climatic  conditions 
here. 

Riess:     What  would  be  the  reason  for  collecting  on  the  outer  range  of  a 
plant's  habitat,  rather  than  where  a  plant  is  growing  most 
lushly? 

Roderick:   I  can't  quite  think  on  that  myself.   When  I'm  into  a  patch  of 

something,  I  look  for  the  most  vigorous  plant  to  get  my  cuttings 
from.   It  has  the  best  wood;  it  means  it  has  less  fungus 
diseases  or  things  that  way  around  it. 

Riess:     There  might  be  a  philosophy  that  would  say  that  you  should  get 

the  least  vigorous  that  is  surviving;  that  there  is  something  in 
the  genetic  makeup  of  the  one  that  is  surviving  under  the  most 
adverse  conditions  that  should  be  saved  because  it  has  what  it 
takes . 

Roderick:   The  only  thing  is  that  there  the  cuttings  would  be  much  more 

difficult  to  get  them  to  root.   That's  the  thing  I  keep  thinking 
about.   If  I  know  something  is  very  rare,  and  I'm  taking 
cuttings,  I'll  take  from  as  many  different  plants  as  I  can, 
hoping  to  find  one  that  is  a  little  bit  genetically  easier  to 
propagate.   I  try  my  best  never,  unless  there's  some  precise 
reason,  to  take  from  only  one  plant. 

1   For  instance,  I  keep  thinking  of  this  one  manzanita  that  I 
just  flipped  over  that  Roger  Raiche  has  collected  and  called 
'Myrtle  Wolf.  It's  a  real  pink  flower,  and  of  course  Myrtle 


Riess: 


96 


[Wolf]  loves  pink.   I  keep  thinking  of  that  one.   That  was  such 
a  magnificent  color  combination  of  bluey- green  foliage  and  these 
beautiful  pink  flowers  that  I'm  hoping  it's  going  to  be  easy  to 
grow  and  propagate.   I'll  try  to  get  it  onto  the  market,  because 
it  would  really  make  a  fine  garden  plant  with  that  beautiful 
show.   That's  why  that  particular  one  was  collected. 

But  over  all,  when  I  go  into  an  area,  and  I'm  taking 
cuttings,  I  generally  look  for  the  most  vigorous.   Or  if  it  is 
something  rare,  you  take  anything,  but  never  chop  the  devil  out 
of  one  plant.   This  is  why  I  like  to  take  from  various  plants:  I 
don't  hurt  one,  but  also,  you'll  find  one  of  them,  maybe,  is 
genetically  more  easy  to  propagate. 

Have  you  studied  genetics? 


Roderick:   I've  got  books  somewhere  around  here  where  I've  had  ray  nose  into 
them. 

I  only  recently  got  a  T.V.   Before  that,  when  I  didn't  have 
that,  all  these  periodicals  that  we  got  at  the  UC  Botanical 
Garden,  I'd  bring  them  home,  and  that's  what  I  did  in  the 
evening.   I  read  those  and  tried  to  keep  up  on  all  those  things. 


Carl  Purdv.  Theodore  Pavne .  and  Lester  Rowntree 


Riess:     Bob  Ornduff  said  that  Lester  Rowntree  and  Carl  Purdy  and 

Theodore  Payne  were  three  who  stood  out  as  being  interested  in 
the  horticultural  value  of  California  natives. 

Roderick:   Unfortunately,  though,  Carl  Purdy  was  not  only  interested  in 
horticulture,  but  also  in  the  mighty  dollar.   If  he  only 
collected  bulbs  for  horticulture  it  would  have  been  great.   But 
he  collected  them  during  the  Depression,  and  I  can  remember  as  a 
kid,  "If  you  buy  a  box  of  my  Post  Toasties,  you're  going  to  get 
a  free  bulb."  Or,  "If  you  take  a  subscription  to  our  magazine, 
we'll  give  you  ten  free  bulbs."   That's  how  the  biggest  share  of 
his  collecting  went. 

Riess:     Who  was  he?  Where  was  he  from? 

Roderick:   He  was  up  at  Ukiah,  up  in  the  hills  behind  Ukiah.   Exactly  how 
he  got  started,  I  can't  quite  tell  you.   I've  never  taken  time 
to  read  his  book.   I  don't  even  have  his  book  because  I'm  so 
disgusted  with  him  and  the  way  he  over-collected.   In  his  book-- 
I  did  have  this  xerox  given  to  me --he  told  in  there  how  he 


97 


trained  his  collectors  [so  they  went]  from  collecting  from  three 
to  four  thousand  bulbs  a  day  to  ten  to  twelve  thousand  bulbs  a 
day  per  man. 


Riess:     That's  impossible! 
whole  place? 


You  mean  he  would  just  go  and  dig  up  the 


Roderick:   He  sent  a  crew--.   Up  at  the  little  village  of  Comptche  in 

Mendocino  County  I  talked  with  an  old  lady- -I  think  her  name  was 
Thompson,  if  I  remember  rightly—who  was  born  and  raised  in  that 
village  and  that  valley.   She  says  that  as  a  young  girl,  shortly 
after  the  turn  of  the  century,  the  hills  were  pink  with 
Ervthronium  revolutum  by  the  millions.   She  said  it  took  his  men 
about  ten  years  to  completely  wipe  that  population  out.   You 
cannot  see  but  a  very  few  in  a  couple  spots .   Purdy  dug  them  by 
the  millions  and  sold  them  by  the  millions,  but  not  for 
horticulture,  mostly  for  giveaways.   And  those  were  people  that 
didn't  know  what  they  were  getting  and  how  to  take  care  of  them. 

Riess:     Who  is  Theodore  Payne? 

Roderick:   Theodore  Payne  was  an  Englishman  who  absolutely  loved  the 
natives.   I  don't  know  his  background  completely,  but 
undoubtedly  he  was  a  good  businessman  and  made  a  lot  of  money- - 
something  like  Louis  Edmonds.   I  would  add  this  Louis  Edmonds  in 
that  list  of  persons.   Louis  Edmonds  was  the  engineer  for  C  &  H 
Sugar  Company,  chief  engineer.   The  native  nursery  was  a  hobby 
more  than  anything  else. 

But  Theodore  Payne  started  this  nursery,  and  seed 
collecting.   When  he  died  he  had  a  lot  of  friends  following  with 
him,  and  they  kept  the  place  going  and  they  are  still  in 
business  [Theodore  Payne  Foundation,  in  Los  Angeles  area] .   They 
hardly  do  any  seed  collecting.   They  buy  almost  all  the  seed 
that  they  sell.   But  they  do  propagate  a  lot  of  plants  for  their 
nurseries  that  they  have. 

Lester  Rowntree- -she  was  mostly  seed.   She  was  a  tiny, 
little  thing.   She  went  with  a  burro  all  through  the  Sierra. 
When  she  had  her  pack  on  that  burro  you  couldn't  see  her,  the 
burro's  head  and  ears  were  above  her  head,  [laughing]  I've  seen 
pictures  of  her  and  the  burro. 

Riess:     Did  you  encounter  her  in  your  collecting? 

Roderick:   No,  no.   She  was  already  eighty  before  I  met  her.   I  got 
acquainted  with  her--.   //// 


98 


Roderick:   I  think  it  was  her  eighty -seventh  birthday,  and  a  group  of  us 

went  and  had  a  birthday  party  for  her  down  on  the  preserve  down 
there  in  Carmel,  the  Hastings  Preserve.   She  said  she  would  not 
have  a  birthday  in  a  house.   She  would  go  out  to  the  Hastings 
Preserve  and  have  a  birthday  party  underneath  the  oak, trees.   No 
frills  at  all- -a  couple  pieces  of  dried  fruit  and  some  water  and 
that  was  it.   And  we  spent  the  whole  three  or  four  hours  with 
her  there  sitting  in  the  grasses. 

That  was  the  first  time  that  I  really  enjoyed  her.   I  had 
talked  with  her  more  than  once,  but  this  was  the  most  informal 
way.   I  used  to,  then,  go  down  and  see  her  every  so  often. 
That's  where  I  got  such  a  kick  out  of  her.  When  they  destroyed 
her  Lewisia  rediviva  spot  she  said,  "I  said  strong  words  for  a 
Quaker!   I  said  strong  words!"  And  I  heard  that  she  could  say 
"hell"  and  "damn"  as  good  as  anybody  else  when  she  got  mad. 


Taxonomists 


Riess:     Ornduff  also  said  something  about  taxonomy  being  developed  on  UC 
campuses,  Stanford,  and  Rancho  Santa  Ana.   What  does  that  mean? 

Roderick:   I  don't  know  what  he  meant  by  that,  because  taxonomy  goes  way 
back.   [Edward  Lee]  Greene  was  the  one  who  started  it. 

Riess:     He  started  the  Botanical  Garden  at  Berkeley,  on  the  campus. 

Roderick:   Yes.   Then  they  had  several  other  persons.   Of  course  there  was 
Alice  Eastwood,  too,  in  on  this.   Between  Greene  and  Alice 
Eastwood  they  were  splitting  everything  up.   A  lot  of  people 
didn't  like  them. 

In  fact  Marcus  Jones  with  his  sharp  tongue  was  the  one  that 
said  two  things.   The  first  thing  was,  "All  botanists  are  fools; 
there's  only  a  degree  of  difference  between  them."   Then,  when 
Greene  died,  he  published,  "Since  my  last  publication,  several 
notable  botanists  have  died.   Greene,  the  pest  of  all  botanists, 
died.   If  they  dig  a  hole  big  enough  to  hold  him  and  all  of  his 
trivia,  it's  going  to  be  a  gigantic  hole" --or  something  like 
this. 

Riess:     Botanists  spend  too  much  time  over  trivia? 

Roderick:   A  lot  of  them  would  take  and  split  down  till  it  was  very 
difficult  to  try  to  identify  a  plant. 


99 


There  was  also  the  Brandegees,  Katherine  and  Townsend 
Brandegee.   The  saying  goes  that  Katherine  Brandegee  would  be 
happy  if  they  could  lump  all  species  into  one  species  in 
California.   Yet  her  husband  is  going  on  and  describing  new 
species  all  the  time.   In  fact  it  was  Katherine  Brandegee, 
before  she  was  a  Brandegee,  that  hired  Alice  Eastwood  in  the 
California  Academy  of  Sciences. 

There  was  a  fellow- -Gustaf  Eisen,  I  think  his  name  was-- 
that  was  the  head  of  the  botany  department  [at  the  California 
Academy  of  Sciences].   He's  the  one  that  brought  in  the 
Carpenter ia.   Fremont  had  discovered  it,  but  it  was  Eisen  that 
brought  it  into  cultivation.   He  was  only  at  the  Academy  for  a 
short  time.   He  left,  and  then  Alice  Eastwood  took  over. 

Riess:     I  wonder  why  it  is  that  there  are  so  many  fine  women  botanists. 
Do  you  have  any  observations  on  women  in  botany? 

Roderick:   Most  of  them  didn't  go  in  for  other  things.   Botany  way  back,  I 
think,  was  considered  man's  work,  but  then  the  men  wanted  to  be 
outdoors,  and  the  women  were  more  willing  to  stay  in  the 
herbarium  and  set  down  and  take  the  time  of  working  things  out. 
I  think  this  is  more  the  way  it  is,  rather  than  anything  else. 
I  think  it's  just  that  they  were  willing  to  stay  in  and  set  in 
one  space  and  work  with  something  until  they  got  it  finally 
down. 


Irja  (Mrs.  Walter)  Knight  and  Wayne  Roderick  on  a  trip  to  the  Fort  Bragg  dunes 
area,  1965. 


Photograph  by  Walter  Knight 


100 


V  TILDEN  PARK  BOTANIC  GARDEN 


Jim  Roof 


Riess:     Lets  get  more  specifically  into  your  tenure  at  the  Regional 

Park's  Botanic  Garden,  1976-1983.   Before  you  got  up  to  Tilden, 
had  you  been  exchanging  plants  with  Tilden  when  you  were  at  UC? 

Roderick:   To  a  degree.   Jim  was  a  very  difficult  person  to  get  along  with. 
Riess:     Tell  me  about  Jim. 

Roderick:   Well,  it  finally  turned  out  that  he  had  a  brain  tumor,  one  of 
those  very  slow-acting  ones.   And  I  think  this  is  one  of  the 
reasons  why  he  was  such  a  strange  person.   For  example,  when  we 
went  out  on  field  trips  together  I  just  got  cussed  every  time 
I'd  even  look  like  I  was  going  to  take  a  cutting.   And  I  mean 
dirty  cussing,  not  just  plain  cussing,  but  dirty  cussing. 

Riess:     When  was  this? 

Roderick:   The  first  time  would  be  when  I  started  to  work  for  UC- -probably 
not  later  than  1961,  because  I  started  in  1960. 

Riess:     You  would  have  been  taken  along  by  him? 

Roderick:   No.   We'd  go  together.   I  learned  right  away  that  he  was  such  an 
unusual,  strange  person  that  I  just  didn't  want  to  get  too 
close.   There  was  something  about  this  that  I  just  couldn't  get 
too  close  to  him.   It  was  worse  than  I  ever  thought  it  was  going 
to  be. 

Riess:     .But  it  sounds  like  there  was  a  good  arrangement  between  Tilden 
and  UC. 

Roderick:   It  was  great,  but  you  couldn't  do  too  much  cooperating  with  him. 
You  never  knew  which  way  he  was  going  to  go  or  how  he  was  going 
to  react  to  anything. 


101 


Riess:     Did  that  change  over  the  years? 

Roderick:   Yes,  for  the  worse.   When  I  took  over  I  tried  my  best  to  keep 
still  and  not  to  say  very  much,  trying  to  keep  friendly.   Even 
then,  we  couldn't--. 

Riess:     What  were  his  strengths? 

Roderick:   Stories. 

Riess:     No,  I  mean  in  the  garden. 

Roderick:   The  one  thing  I  didn't  like,  he  did  not  design  his  paths  well. 
A  lot  of  them- -they  still  have  them—are  very  difficult.   You 
start  out  heading  the  direction  you  want,  and  before  you  know 
it,  the  path  is  going  the  opposite  way. 

Riess:     And  that  was  deliberate? 

Roderick:   Yes,  from  what  he  said.   He  had  set  out  there  for  hours  trying 
to  figure  out  a  trail.   But  still,  it  never  worked  too  good. 

His  ideas  of  horticulture  were  horrible.   For  instance,  one 
of  the  first  things  he  told  me  was  he  never,  ever  left  a  needle, 
a  twig,  a  leaf  on  the  ground.   They  had  to  be  always  raked  up 
from  around  the  plants.   The  plants  did  very  well  for  about 
fifteen,  twenty  years,  and  all  of  a  sudden  he  said  that  he 
noticed  they  weren't  growing  so  very  well.   And  at  the  same  time 
he  was  getting  ground  washing  away  and  getting  gullies  and  so 
forth.   This  is  when  he  started  putting  the  banks  covered  with 
cement  with  rocks  in  them  to  stop  the  erosion. 

He  never  figured  out  that  the  reason  the  plants  were  doing 
poor  was  that  there  was  no  fertilizer  from  the  decomposed  leaves 
and  twigs  and  so  forth,  and  that  it  was  the  leaves  and  twigs 
that  were  stopping  the  rain  from  hitting  the  ground  and  stopping 
the  erosion.   He  never  figured  that  out. 

Also,  he  knew  there  were  two  kinds  of  soil  in  the  garden, 
but  he  never  figured  out  clay  and  loam,  he  didn't  know  that. 

Riess:     We  have  some  stories  about  him  from  [A.E.]  Wieslander,  the  soil 
scientist,  who  got  involved  in  a  controversy  about  whether  to 
put  a  new  botanic  garden  in  Chabot  Regional  Park. 

Roderick:   That's  right.   Over  at  Chabot  the  soil  was  much  better.   But  it 
was  very  slippy,  and  whole  hillsides  were  just  slipping  down. 
That  was  the  thing  that  was  wrong  with  that.   But  Jim  never 


102 


figured  out--.   He  wrote  about  this.   He  brought  down  the 
bristle  cone  pines,  and  he  knew  they  grew  in  rocks  and  gravelly 
soils,  and  yet  he  put  them  in  clay.   They  grew  for  a  little 
while  and  then  died. 

Riess:     I  enjoyed  my  trip  up  to  the  Botanic  Garden  at  Tilden  so  much  the 
other  day.   The  Sierra  meadow  area  is  just  wonderful. 

Roderick:   Did  you  notice  that  more  or  less  in  front  of  that  is  a  pond? 
That  was  one  of  the  places  he  couldn't  get  anything  to  grow. 
After  I  had  been  there  for  a  year  I  found  out  why,  right  away. 
It  was  this  gooey  clay.   It  was  a  little  bit  of  a  low  spot,  and 
the  water  sat  there  all  winter.   Even  the  quaking  aspen  couldn't 
take  it.   They  died,  and  they  moved  up  onto  the  hill. 

Riess:      "Moved  up  onto  the  hill?" 

Roderick:   Root  suckers  shot  up  on  the  slopes  when  the  trees  died.   They 
moved  up  onto  the  hills  where  there  was  drainage. 

The  low  spot  was  mud  puddles,  so  why  not  make  it  into  a 
pond?   That's  how  come  we  dug  it  out. 

Riess:     When  you  came  up  there,  did  you  replace  him,  or  did  you  come  up 
to  work  for  him? 

Roderick:   I  replaced  him. 

Riess:     Was  there  a  transition  period? 

Roderick:   There  was  supposed  to  be.   But  there  was  just  no  way  that 

anybody  could  get  along  with  him.   One  of  the  things  I  found  out 
was  that  the  men  were  cussed  up  one  side  and  down  the  other  side 
for  no  reason  at  all.   He  would  rather  tell  them  that  they  were 
every  kind  of  a  dirty  word  he  could  think  about  them,  and  "Go  do 
this,"  and  he  wouldn't  tell  them  why  he  wanted  it  done  that  way. 
Never  would  tell  them  any  information,  just  so  he  could  be  the 
boss,  the  top,  the  brains.   He  had  so  many  weird,  strange  ideas, 
people  can't  believe  that  he  got  plants  to  grow  some  of  the 
strange  ways  that  he  did. 

Riess:     What  were  the  main  problems  that  you  had  to  deal  with  right 
away? 

Roderick:   The  worst  of  all,  I  would  give  orders  when  I  wanted  certain 

things  done.   Then  when  I  got  out  of  there  he'd  come  around  and 
tell  the  fellows  to  do  the  opposite. 

Riess:     But  didn't  he  leave  when  you  came? 


103 


Roderick:   He  lived  there!   He  lived  in  a  one -room  shack.   No  running 

water.   He  had  an  extension  cord  from  the  back  office  through 
the  wall  to  his  shack  to  have  electricity. 

The  other  thing  that  I  didn't  realize  was  that  he  had  keys. 
He  loved  padlocks.   Everything  was  locked.   I  unlocked 
everything.   In  fact,  my  orders  were  to  get  the  Visitor  Center 
open  and  exhibits  up  and  lectures  going.   That  was  my  first 
priority.   I  left  everything  unlocked  so  the  staff  could  see 
what  was  going  on. 

I  found  out  finally,  too,  that  it  was  all  open  to  Jim  Roof, 
and  he  was  going  into  my  personal  papers  and  taking  them  to  the 
main  office  and  making  little  remarks  and  trying  to  get  me  out 
of  there.   In  fact,  he  took  my  first  draft  that  I  made  for  my 
letter  for  volunteers  up  to  the  main  office  and  said  that  this 
was  what  I  sent  out.   They  stupidly,  even  up  there,  believed 
that.   And  you  could  see  all  of  my  corrections  and  making  new 
paragraphs  and  correcting  the  spelling  and  so  forth.   I  had  just 
sat  down  one  morning  and  typed  out  a  letter,  and  then  saw  what  I 
liked  and  what  I  didn't  like.   Scratched  down  a  few  things. 

Riess:     And  what  did  he  do  with  it? 

Roderick:   Took  it  to  the  main  office  and  said  this  is  what  I  sent  out  all 
over  the  countryside  for  trying  to  get  volunteers. 

Riess:     By  the  main  office  you  mean  what? 

Roderick:   I  mean  the  Regional  Park  office  up  at  Skyline. 

Riess:     You  did  finally  triumph.   How? 

Roderick:   I'm  still  not  quite  certain.   One  of  the  things  I  think  that 

really  helped  was  that  he  tried  to  tell  everybody  he  was  pushed 
out.   And,  of  course,  he  always  told  about  me  destroying  the 
place. 

He  got  the  newspapers  and  T.V.  and  radio  and  all  of  this  to 
listen  to  him.   They'd  come  up  with  these  different  stories, 
like  that  Mr.  Roof  had  been  pushed  out  and  all  this  and  that. 
They  would  hear  all  this  and  they'd  have  to  investigate,  to  look 
into  it. 

These  people  would  come  up  and  look  around  and  say,  "Well, 
we've  never  been  here  before,  but,  gee,  this  looks  great!" 
Invariably  it  went  against  him  every  time  he  opened  his  mouth. 


104 


We  got  a  lot  of  nice  people  that  started  to  come  to  the  garden 
that  way. 


Records  and  Numberin£  System 


Riess : 


Roderick: 


Riess: 


Roderick: 


You  said  that  you  had  a  letter  to  volunteers, 
volunteer  program  before? 


Had  there  been  a 


Riess : 


No.   Some  of  these  young  people  that  he  had  met,  he  would  get 
them  to  come  and  work  a  few  days.   But  then  they'd  get  sick  and 
tired  and  move  out. 

You  were  trying  to  get  the  same  kind  of  arrangement  you  had  had 
at  UC  of  docents? 

Yes.   I  had  thought  about  that,  but  at  that  time  I  didn't  dare 
think  too  much,  because  there  were  so  many  things  that  I  had  to 
try  to  get  organized. 

Jim  had  never  got  the  place  so  it  could  even  be  called  a 
botanic  garden.   There  were  no  records  of  any  kind.   Nothing  had 
ever  been  done  that  way.   On  top  of  that,  he  had  this  number 
system- -different  colors  for  different  parts  of  the  state,  like 
desert  was  one  color,  the  Sierra  was  another  color. 

And  that  is  still  there? 


Roderick:   That's  still  going  on.   I  think,  eventually,  they're  going  to 
have  to  change  that  a  little  bit. 

Anyhow,  in  his  book  that  he  had  produced  as  a  guide  to  the 
garden  it  said  that  number  such-and-such  was  one  certain  plant. 
Well,  it  wasn't  there.   Then  I  found  a  record  saying  that  same 
number  was  something  else.   It  wasn't  there.   It  was  a  yucca 
with  the  same  number. 

You  don't  do  that.   You've  got  to  have  something  that  you 
can  go  back  to,  because  dead  records  are  just  as  important  as 
live,  growing  plants.   It  gives  you  information.   Maybe  it  tells 
you  what  kind  of  conditions  you  planted  it  under,  or  maybe  you 
might  have  collected  it,  say,  from  the  northern  part  of  its 
range,  while  the  southern  part  of  the  range  would  have  been  a 
better  collection  area,  and  done  better. 

You  never  know  for  certain  on  these  things .   And  those  dead 
records  are  important.   Every  once  in  awhile  something  dies,  but 


105 


part  of  the  root  is  still  alive,  and  up  comes  a  shoot  from  it, 
and  so  you  resurrect  it  again.   It's  a  very  interesting  thing 
when  you  get  into  this. 

Trying  to  figure  records--.   Finally,  I  worked  on  the 
.normal  accessioning  numbers  of  everybody  else.   When  we  traded 
back  and  forth  with  other  botanic  gardens,  then  we  worked  out 
that  we  put  a  "T"  in  front  of  ours,  which  means  Tilden;  and  "UC" 
is  UCB;  over  at  Strybing,  it  would  be  "S"  or  "ST"--this  is  how 
they  generally  do  it  for  Strybing.   So  our  numbers  will  be  all 
the  same,  except  we'll  have  these  letters  in  front  of  it  when  we 
trade  back  and  forth. 

We  finally  had  to  more  or  less  use  his  old  number  system 
for  the  existing  plants,  trying  to  compensate  for  all  the 
headaches  of  getting  these  other  things  going.   Then  trying  to 
map  the  garden  and  get  the  plants  onto  the  map  and  the  beds 
numbered- -all  of  that  I  had  to  work  out. 

Riess:     He  had  the  colored  labels,  but  he  didn't  have  the  same  kind  of 
information? 

Roderick:   He  had  practically  nothing.   Also,  when  he  left  the  garden  he 
took  all  the  records  that  he  had  ever  had  and  held  them  up  for 
ransom.   The  Regional  Parks  had  to  pay  him  money  to  get  those 
records.   When  I  finally  got  my  hands  on  them,  I  couldn't 
believe  it.   It  was  just  practically  the  same  thing  that  was  on 
the  labels.   No  information  at  all,  except  for  three.   On  them 
were  plants  that  had  died  after  I  had  taken  over,  "killed  by  the 
hands  of  Roderick."   [chuckles] 

Riess:     Oh,  poor  guy,  sounds  miserable. 

Roderick:   I  can  laugh  about  it  now,  but  it  was  horrible,  hell. 


Mapping.  Thinning  (Ted  Kipping) .  and  Digging 


Riess:     You  had  to  map  the  place,  you  say? 

Roderick:   Yes.   I  got  May  Bios  to  take  and  lay  out  the  general  layout  of 

the  place.   They  weren't  too  accurate,  but  at  least  from  that  we 
could  then  go  on  and  get  accurate  maps  and  then  get  the  plants 
all  laid  out  on  those  maps  so  that  we  can  keep  up  to  date  on 
things  and  find  things.   Say  an  airplane  crashes  into  the 
building  and  kills  everybody  at  work  there,  the  next  persons 
that  could  come  on  would  at  least  have  something  and  could  find 


106 


everything  and  know  where  to  find  things  and  try  to  keep  the 
records  up.   That  was  another  thing. 

I  still  say  one  of  my  most  important  things--.   Jim  would 
plant,  but  never  thin.   The  trees  were  planted  about  six  feet 
apart,  and  the  surplus  ones  never  removed.   The  seven,  eight 
years  that  I  was  there,  1  took  close  to  three  hundred  trees  out 
in  that  little  seven  acres,  most  of  it  all  for  free.   Ted 
Kipping- -this  is  when  he  was  really  training  a  lot  of  persons  on 
tree  work—he  would  send  over  a  couple  of  good,  trained  men  with 
a  whole  crew  of  trainees .   They  removed  practically  every  one  of 
those  with  no  cost  to  us. 

Riess :     They  would  ball  them  up  and  take  them  off? 

Roderick:   No.   This  is  just  cutting  them  down. 

Riess:     I  thought  maybe  they  were  taking  them  out  for  a  garden. 

Roderick:   No.   They  were  too  big.   But  taking  out  trees  where  things  are 
crowded,  which  is  like  in  a  private  garden,  you've  got  to  be 
very  careful  so  that  you  do  not  destroy  other  things  around. 
This  is  where  he  trained  his  men.   He  did  this  at  UC  and  at 
Strybing.   At  Strybing  he  did  so  much  that  he's  given  a  room 
once  a  month.   Because  he's  a  magnificent  photographer,  he  shows 
pictures  there  once  a  month.   Half  the  time  it's  him,  and  half 
the  time  it's  other  people's  pictures.   They  gave  him  that 
expensive  room  once  a  month  forever. 

Riess:     I  wondered  about  those  Ted  Kipping  evenings.   Is  it  a  very 
select  group  of  people  that  attend? 

Roderick:  That  is  a  potluck  always.  He  invites  everybody,  and  if  you've 
got  a  friend  that  you  think  would  like  to  go,  tell  him  to  come 
along! 

Riess:     He  does  it  because  he  loves  to  show  the  slides? 

Roderick:   Yes,  and  he  likes  people  to  know  more  about  plants.   Well,  not 

necessarily  all  the  time  plants,  but  90  percent  of  the  time  it's 
on  plants.   It's  just  a  nice  little  evening  thing.   I  would 
imagine  that  he  did  over  $75,000  worth  of  tree  work  at  Tilden. 

Riess:     You  first  met  him  at  UC? 

Roderick:   I'd  known  him  for  many  years.   First  I  had  known  his  brother, 
Jofr.i,  and  through  John  I  met  Ted.   This  is  when  John  was  still 
teaching  at  Strybing,  and  Ted  came  in  as  a  worker  in  the  garden 


107 


and  then  got  into  the  tree  work.   So  I've  known  him  for  a  couple 
of  decades . 

Riess:     Was  there  a  great  hue  and  cry  when  you  started  taking  the  trees 
out? 

Roderick:   Oh,  my  God!  You've  never  heard  such  screaming  in  your  life! 
Riess:     From  whom,  besides  Roof?  Who  else  cared  about  the  garden? 

Roderick:   Other  people.   They  couldn't  see  it.   Finally  in  the  redwood 
forest,  when  you  could  see  into  the  forest  there,  people  then 
started  getting  their  eyes  open.   But  it  took  an  awful  lot  of 
heartbreak  and  me  getting  screamed  at. 

Then,  one  time--.   The  ponderosa  pines  were  so  crowded. 
They  were  just  all  misshapen.   Ted's  crew  got  out  there,  and 
they  had  taken  out  the  excess  trees,  and  they  were  trying  to 
shape  up  the  remaining  ones.   Jim  came  in  and  raised  so  much 
hell  that  the  foreman,  Al  Sinares,  finally  thought  that  Jim  was 
correct,  and  he  just  raised  hell  with  the  guys.   They  finally 
got  up  and  walked  out  and  said  they  were  never  coming  back 
again. 

Yes,  one  of  the  five  or  six  remaining  trees  looked  like 
hell.   But  forty  years  of  growth- -you' re  going  to  have  to  fi'gure 
that  it's  going  to  take  a  few  years  to  come  back,  and  it 
wouldn't  look  like  hell.   Now  it's  a  beautiful  tree.   It  took 
about  ten  years,  but  it's  a  beautiful  tree  now. 

Riess:     I  can  see  how  you  had  to  be  really  strong  in  that  situation. 

People  resist  tree  removal.   Did  you  have  to  get  permission  for 
all  of  that  tree  work  from  headquarters? 

Roderick:   I  took  it  on  myself.   On  my  monthly  report  I  would  report  that 
"we  had  so  many  trees  removed,"  and  "it  was  starting  to  look 
better  already"- -things  this  way. 

Riess:     What  did  you  do  about  the  soil?  What  could  you  do? 

Roderick:   The  main  thing  that  I  had  said  when  the  guys  were  bringing  some 
good  soil  in  was  to  work  some  of  it  down  into  the  clay  so  you 
have  a  transition.   Jim  never  knew  this,  and  this  is  why  he  made 
these  mounds,  and  planted  the  things  on  them.   The  roots  would 
hit  the  clay  and  go  out  into  the  better  soil.   Then  they  had  to 
water  to  keep  the  plants  alive.   I  tried  to  make  the  transition 
in  the  soil. 


108 


The  other  thing,  also,  when  I  did  the  old  original  parking 
lot,  got  it  fenced  in,  I  got  piles  of  soil  deep  enough  for 
desert  plants.   It  had  been  a  parking  lot,  and  it  had  a  lot  of 
rock  already  moved  into  it,  so  it  didn't  have  to  have  a 
transition  zone  there.   Things  have  been  doing  very  good  on 
that.   I  did  get,  I  think  now,  so  all  the  persons  will  work  some 
of  the  new  material  into  the  old  for  a  transition. 


Staff  and  the  Public^/ 


Roderick:   [talking  before  the  recorder  is  on  about  training  helpers  in  the 
Regional  Parks  Botanic  Garden] --the  foreman  there,  Al  Seneres ,  I 
would  take  him  out  and  show  him  how  to  collect,  and  how  to 
record  the  field  notes  that  I  wanted  for  every  plant  that  was 
brought  in.   I  took  him  out  two  or  three  times  and  showed  him 
this.   Here,  about  two  or  three  years  after  that,  I  brought  in 
some  plants  and  gave  them  to  him.   He  said,  "Not  good  enough 
field  data.   I  want  more  information!"  That  was  a  great  thing 
to  hear. 

Riess:     That's  wonderful.   As  director  at  Tilden  you  weren't  doing  the 
collecting  anymore? 

Roderick:   [laughing]  You  can't  keep  me  from  doing  this.   But  it  was  better 
for  the  men  to  learn  from  the  beginning,  just  let  them  go  and 
bring  in  everything,  and  try  to  show  them  that  regardless  of 
what  you  bring  in,  say  ten  things  from  one  spot,  that  some  of 
them  are  not  going  to  grow,  and  some  of  them  will  grow,  and  one 
of  them  will  probably  become  a  horrible  pest. 

The  foreman  still  can't  quite  see  all  of  this  yet.   He 
still  likes  to  go  out  and  just  grab  everything  he  can,  good 
stuff  as  well  as  things  of  no  value  at  all  for  a  botanic  garden, 
things  we  already  have.   He  still  doesn't  quite  know  this. 

Riess:     What  kind  of  training  does  he  have? 

Roderick:   Nothing  in  horticulture.   Just  a  very  little  bit  that  he's  taken 
at  night  school  and  what  he's  picked  up. 

Riess:     I  would  think  that  the  educational  level  of  the  people  that 
you've  been  working  with  over  the  years  would  be  rising. 

Roderick:   This  fellow  has  learned  unbelievably.   But  he  has  so  much  to  un 
learn  from  Jim. 


109 


Riess:     Oh,  it's  the  same  person? 
Roderick:  Yes. 

There  is  one  fellow  that's  very  good.   He's  had 
horticultural  training.   I  think  that  eventually  he's  going  to 
be  very,  very  good.   I  give  him  a  bad  time  all  the  time  and  tell 
him  he's  no  good  [laughs],  but  I  can  see  the  things  that  he's 
done,  and  he's  gotten  some  good  results. 

Riess:     How  did  you  change  or  improve  on  the  policy  of  interpretation 
and  the  way  the  garden  related  to  the  public? 

Roderick:   I  encourage  all  people  to  come  unless,  once  in  awhile,  we  have 
somebody  that  is  bound  to  cause  problems. 

Jim  always  considered  it  his  private  garden.   If  he  didn't 
like  you,  "Get  the  hell  out,"  and  then  stronger  than  that.   They 
told  me  that  if  somebody  was  being  chased  by  the  police  that  he 
knew,  and  they  got  in  the  gardens,  he  locked  the  gates  so  the 
police  couldn't  come  in.   A  lot  of  these  kind  of  strange  things 
went  on. 


The  Bad  with  the  Good 


Riess:     All  in  all,  you  were  there  that  six  or  seven  years  and  got  done 
what  you  wanted  to  get  done  up  there? 

Roderick:   I  saw  to  it  that  a  lot  of  the  chaotic  hell  was  gone.   I  was  just 
getting  to  the  good,  pleasurable  things,  and  I  decided  I  could 
retire.   Then  Steve  Edwards  took  over,  and  now  he's  getting  a 
lot  of  the  nice,  glorious  things  going. 

Steve's  got  time  that  he  can  see  about  getting  lots  of 
different  kinds  of  interesting  lectures  going.   I  just  kept  more 
or  less  the  same  thing  going  every  year,  just  to  have  lectures, 
trying  to  get  all  these  different  little  things  figured  out  and 
done,  and  get  some  ideas  and  directions  going  and  things  this 
way.   Now  Steve  has  gotten  three -and- a -half  or  four  acres  more 
added  to  the  garden.   He's  getting  all  those  paths  in  now,  and 
water  into  the  area  so  it  can  really  start  expanding. 

Jim  also  had  one  other  bad  thing:  he  thought  small.   Never 
would  think  big.   Never  figured  for  expanding  or  anything  like 


110 


that.   Where  the  present  office  sets,  you  can  still  look  down 
out  the  window  and  see  this  great  big  chunk  of  cement. 

Jim  was  going  to  build  a  lecture  room  and  so  forth,  which 
was  great,  in  the  shape  of  the  state  of  California,  with  a 
raised  map  of  California  built  in  it.   By  the  time  that  he  got 
all  this  done,  there  wouldn't  be  enough  room  for  twenty  people 
in  the  room.   He  built  out  in  the  middle  of  the  garden  what  we 
call  the  "lodge."  Again,  it  was  going  to  be  a  lecture  room. 
But  he  was  a  very  small  person,  and  the  door  to  get  into  the 
main  entrance,  you  had  to  duck  to  get  in  it.   It  was  about  five- 
and-a-half  feet  high. 

Then  he  built--!  don't  know  what  it  was,  just  big  masses  of 
water-worn  rock  outcrops.   It  looked  very  unnatural.   In  the 
middle  of  it  he  started  to  make  a  pond  with  a  waterfall  in  it  so 
that  no  person  could  come  in  the  door.   They  could  walk  one  way 
or  the  other  around  this ,  but  it  was  only  wide  enough  for  one 
person.   Well,  of  course,  that  was  absolutely  against  all  public 
building  codes,  like  a  fire  hazard.   There  were  just  a  lot  of 
these  funny  kinds  of  things. 

He  never  figured  how  to  really  work  cement.   That  was 
another  thing  that  had  to  be  worked  over  and  fixed  up,  a  lot  of 
that  cement  work  he  did.   In  fact,  at  the  interview  I  had  when  I 
was  accepted  to  take  over  the  job,  I  said  I  would  not  take  any 
cement  out  for  a  long  time.   I  kept  my  promise.   [laughing]   It 
was  about  two  o'clock  the  afternoon  of  the  first  day  before  I 
had  a  sledge  hammer  working  on  some  cement.   It  was,  again,  bad 
cement  work.   You  couldn't  get  the  truck  down  for  emergency  work 
without  knocking  off  the  corner  of  this.   We  couldn't  get  the 
truck  around. 

Riess:     He  does  sound  like  a  character.   It's  almost  unfair  to  go  on 
about  him  anymore . 

Roderick:   He  had  a  lot  of  good  things.   He  did  get  a  lot  of  the  rarer 
plants.   He  brought  in  so  many  rare  plants  and  got  them 
established.   He  did  a  lot  of  good  things.   He  wrote  beautiful. 
He  wrote  beautiful.   He  had  a  degree  in  literature. 


Meeting  Fellow  Botanic  Gardeners 


Riess:  People  who  were  associated  with  the  other  big  botanic  gardens  in 
California:  Maunsell  Van  Rensselaer  at  Santa  Barbara;  the  man  at 
Rancho  Santa  Ana;  Denys  Rowe  who  worked  at  La  Purisima  in 


Ill 


Lompoc.   Were  there  organizations  of  botanic  garden  directors, 
and  were  you  a  part  of  that? 

Roderick:   When  I  started  at  UC  Botanical  Garden  I  tried  to  C'-fordinate  the 
different  native  plant  botanic  gardens.   I  got  Percy  Everett  and 
Bob  Thorne  from  Rancho  Santa  Ana,  and  Dara  Emery  at  Santa 
Barbara,  and  of  course  Art  Menzies,  whom  I  had  known  for  a  long 
time  at  Strybing,  and  Roman  Gankin  and  those  from  over  at  Davis, 
and  of  course  included  Jim  Roof. 

We  had  our  first  meeting  up  here.   We  took  everybody 
around.   Some  of  them  didn't  come.   I  think  it  was  Santa  Barbara 
that  never  did  make  it.   Percy  was  pretty  mad  at  Jim  at  that 
time  because  of  him  screaming  so  badly.   But  we  did  have  a  great 
time. 

We  had  a  second  time.   It  was  up  in  the  Lake  County  area, 
and  that  came  to  a  grinding  halt  all  at  once  because  of  [John 
F. ]  Kennedy  being  assassinated.   We  saw  flags  at  half  mast,  and 
we  stopped  to  find  out.   That  ended  that  one.   Percy  Everett 
said  later,  "Don't  ask  us  anymore  to  come  up  here."  And  he 
said,  "I'm  not  going  to  ask  the  group  to  come  down  there  because 
I  have  to  ask  Jim  Roof.   I  won't  have  it."   That's  how  that 
stopped. 

Riess:     But  you  had  hoped  to  create  a  kind  of  network? 

Roderick:   --a  kind  of  network,  and  to  coordinate  our  work  and  make  sure 

that  we  got  all  these  rare  plants,  and  things  of  beauty,  too.   I 
like  to  have  some  showy  things,  as  well  as  botanical  stuff. 

Riess:     How  does  CNPS  work  specifically  with  the  botanic  gardens?  Do 

they  create  the  network  so  that  this  group  that  you  wished  that 
you  could  have  put  in  place  in  fact  isn't  necessary?  Does  CNPS 
make  sure  that  the  botanic  gardens  have  specimens  of  everything? 

Roderick:   Generally  speaking,  we  don't  say  anything  to  CNPS  when  we  get  an 
idea  to  go  out  and  see  about  some  of  these  rare  plants  to  bring 
and  start  in.   But  when  we  show  that  we're  growing,  CNPS  is 
always  very  happy.   I  think  that  without  even  saying  anything, 
all  of  us  agree  that  the  more  rare  and  endangered  plants  we  can 
grow,  the  better  it  is  for  everybody;  if  something  should  happen 
to  the  things  in  the  wild,  we  know  we  can  get  starts  again  from 
the  botanic  gardens. 

This  is  now  becoming  a  national  thing,  and  all  botanic 
gardens  are  trying  to  work  together  to  get  starts  of  everything 
that's  really  rare  and  endangered,  just  in  case  something 
becomes  extinct.   The  only  place  here  in  the  Bay  Area  that's 


112 


Riess: 


Roderick: 


done  anything  about  this  is  Tilden.   They've  planted  out  two 
things  that  were  extinct  on  Mt.  San  Bruno:  one  manzanita,  and 
the  false  lily-of - the-valley .   Both  of  those  have  been  planted 
back  on  the  mountain.   I  think  that  Steve  said  he's  got  two  or 
three  things  more  that  are  just  about  propagated  enough  now  to 
get  replanted. 

Would  they  be  planted  in  secret  places?   Is  that  the  idea? 

That  I'm  not  quite  certain  on.   I  know  that  some  of  the 
manzanita  was  planted  on  the  original  place,  and  then  a  couple 
on  another  spot.   What  they  did  with  the  Maianthemum,  I'm  not 
sure,  but  it's  somewhere  planted  right  in  the  same  way. 


Regions  and  Zones 


Riess:     The  nine  regions  of  California  that  Jim  Roof  designed  the  Tilden 
garden  around,  was  this  system  of  zones  in  place  before  Jim 
Roof?   I  mean  did  Jepson,  for  instance,  look  at  California  in 
that  way? 

Roderick:   Yes.   They  all  kind  of  look  at- -like  in  the  Sierra  you  have 

different  elevations.   Of  course,  the  top  one  is  Hudsonian,  and 
so  on.   Jim  never  thought  that  way.   He  just  thought  of  it  as 
more  of  a  semi -degree  of  geographical  system.   Even  then,  it  was 
still  not  quite  perfect  the  way  he  had  it  laid  out.   He  followed 
counties,  and  some  counties--.   For  instance,  Kern  County  not 
only  was  Sierran,  but  it  was  also  desert.   So  that  was  another 
thing  that  we  worked  on  that  I  thought  out  and  thought  out. 

We  got  the  staff  together,  and  we  worked  on  that.   Finally 
we  worked  it  out  so  we  tried  to  cut  —  like  Kern  County,  we  cut  it 
in  half,  or  something  that  way.   It's  very  tricky,  and  it's  very 
difficult  to  do  that.  UC  now  has  more  or  less  as  the  botanists 
have  broken  the  state  up,  like  the  Hudsonian  and  those  kinds  of 
things.   It  makes  it  a  little  bit  more  easy  way  of  planting 
things . 

The  other  thing  that  Jim  did  very  poorly  there  was  he  gave 
the  foothill  conditions  very  small  space,  and  that's  one  of  our 
most  important  things  and  biggest  areas.   One  of  the  reasons 
why  we  want  to  enlarge  the  garden  is  to  give  a  larger  area  for 
those  kinds  of  plants.   The  Sierran  area  he  did  give  plenty  of 
room.   But  the  foothill  is,  oh,  I  guess,  about  a  hundred  by  a 
hundred  foot.   We  really  needed  at  least  a  full  acre  for  that. 
Eventually  that's  going  to  be  moved.   It's  going  to  be  a  short 


113 


time,  twenty  or  thirty  years  from  now  and  we'll  have  it  all 
done.   [laughs]   That's  one  thing  about  botanic  gardens:  you 
work  over  centuries,  not  today  and  tomorrow. 

Riess:     That's  right.   Well,  maybe  he  knew  something  about  the  foothills 
that  you  don't  know.   Maybe  he  expected  they  would  disappear, 
[chuckles] 

How  about  Strybing's  California  section?  How  is  it  set  up? 

Roderick:   It's  been  worked  over  again.   Art  Menzies  set  that  up 

originally.   Originally  they  had  spots  already  made,  but  then 
Art  went  and  kind  of  tied  them  together. 

Riess:     Which  model  is  it  based  on?  On  the  elevation  zone  model  or  on 
the--? 

Roderick:   I  don't  think  it's  too  much  made  out  that  way.   They  have  the 
redwood  section,  and  that's  about  the  only  one  that  is  really 
kept  to  a  geographical  or  botanical  way,  because  it  was  so  badly 
mixed  up  originally.   They  have  quite  a  bit  on  riparian,  because 
they  had  a  drainage  area  through  there,  and  they  had  the  rock. 
It's  just  kind  of  general,  and  not  very  much  of  any  kind  of  a 
real  good  layout. 

Riess:     They  don't  have  the  same  botanic  garden  ambitions? 

Roderick:   No.   In  Strybing  they  are  more  interested  in  ornamental  then 

they  are  in  botanical.   If  you  go  through  there,  you'll  see  that 
there  is  a  lot  more  of  horticultural.   They've  got  these 
demonstration  gardens  to  give  persons  ideas  of  what  they  can  do 
in  their  own  gardens.   More  that  way. 


Marge  Hayakawa  and  Wayne  Roderick,  Sonoma  Coast  State  Park,  1986. 


Photograph  by  Vaclav  Pies  til 


114 


VI  THE  BIG  HORTICULTURAL  PICTURE:  INTERNATIONAL  CONNECTIONS 
[Interview  4:   June  6,  1990 ]#// 

Wlldf lowers .  Floras .  Keys .  Terminology 


Riess:     We're  looking  at  your  library  of  garden  books,  and  your  stacks 
of  magazines  and  so  on.   Do  you  save  everything? 

Roderick:   Oh,  I've  also  got  piles  and  piles  and  piles  of  letters  from 
different  people  from  all  over  the  country  and  the  world.   I 
can't  throw  them  away,  and  yet  they're  old  and  no  good  at  all, 
and  I've  got  to  go  in  one  day  and  just  start  tossing  out. 

Riess:     Do  you  think  they  belong  in  some  kind  of  archives? 

Roderick:   I  don't  know.   I  did  take  about  six,  eight,  ten  boxes  five  or 

six  years  ago  and  gave  them  to  Strybing  Arboretum.   They  had  the 
grandest  time  going  through  and  saving  what  they  wanted  and 
tossing  the  rest. 

Riess:     Well,  isn't  that  a  relief?  You  can  continue  to  do  that. 

I  want  to  get  a  question  off  my  chest  right  now.   I  have 
here  A  Field  Guide  to  Pacific  States  Wildflowers  [Theodore  F. 
Niehaus,  illustrations  by  Charles  L.  Ripper,  Houghton  Mifflin 
Co.,  1976].   What's  the  difference  between  "wildf lowers"  and 
"native  plants?" 

Roderick:   They  are  all  the  same.   This  is  Ted  Niehaus 's  book?  Yes. 

That's  a  very  good  book.   I  use  it  a  lot.   In  fact  I  have  two 
copies  of  it,  one  that  he  gave  me  pre -publishing  date.   That 
one --it's  all  written  in  there --never  gets  out  of  my  house,  but 
the  cheap  one  goes  everywhere  with  me.   If  nothing  else,  like 
with  the  sunflower  family,  where  you've  got  such  a  tremendous 
number  of  them,  and  you're  not  quite  certain  what  group  of  the 
sunflower  family  it  belongs  to,  just  looking  at  the  line 
drawings,  instantly  you  can  get  into  the  right  area.   Then  it's 


115 


so  easy  to  go  to  Munz  or  Jepson  and  figure  it  out  quickly  down 
at  least  to  the  genus . 

Riess:     And  Jepson  is  a  complete  flora  for  California? 

Roderick:   It's  a  flora  for  California,  and  it  isn't  quite  complete.   No 

flora  can  ever  be  complete  because  you  keep  finding  more  things. 

Now,  the  Jepson  Manual  is  being  revised,  and  it  will  be  out 
supposedly  in  fall  of  '91  or  early  '92,  probably  '92.   Even  with 
the  new  flora,  it's  still  not  going  to  be  the  easiest  thing  in 
the  world  to  use.   There  are  a  few  things  that  are  going  to  be 
rather  difficult  for  people.   But  the  technical  terms  are  being 
broken  down  into  easy  English  for  the  amateur,  and  they're 
trying  to  eliminate,  as  much  as  they  can,  "more  or  less."  Munz 
used  that  a  tremendous  amount,  so  many  species,  that  there's 
just  no  way  that  you  could  get  down  to  a  species  without  knowing 
the  plant  itself.   FA  California  Flora,  by  Philip  A.  Munz,  in 
collaboration  with  David  D.  Keck] 

Riess:     What  do  you  mean  by  "more  or  less?" 

Roderick:   The  term  they  use  is  "more  or  less" --plus  or  minus.   So  you  get 
a  species  that  the  flowers  are  lavender  to  purple  on  this  one, 
"more  or  less."  The  next  species,  the  flowers  are  purple  to 
lavender,  "more  or  less."   [laughter] 

You're  into  difficulties.   I  mean,  especially  like  beyond 
the  desert,  where  things  are  not  too  familiar,  you'll  find-- 
well,  Gilias,  there  are  about  twenty  or  thirty  species  of  them, 
and  it's  "more  or  less"  on  them.   Up  here  are  lupines,  and 
lupines  are  again  "more  or  less,"  and  to  really  identify  a 
lupine  you  almost  need  a  chromosome  count.   There's  so  many  of 
these  plants  that  you  have  to  have  so  many  different  things  to 
try  to  identify  them..  This  is  what  Jim  Hickman  is  doing  in 
doing  the  editing.   He's  trying  to  get  so  that  you  can  take  and 
do  this. 

Riess:     He's  the  new  editor  of  the  Jepson? 

Roderick:  Yes.  Nicest  guy  you'll  ever  want  to  see  in  your  life. 

Riess:     Are  they  in  fact  doing  chromosome  counts? 

Roderick:   I  think  from  the  pieces  of  the  manuscript  that  I  had,  I  haven't 
seen  or  really  noticed  any  chromosome  count  numbers.   They  will 
probably  be  put  in,  but  as  far  as  for  identifying  the  plants, 
each  genus  has  a  key  to  all  the  species  in  that  genus.   They  are 
trying  their  best  to  get  simple  things.   I  had  the  fritillarias 


116 


to  go  over,  and  I'm  still  screaming  bloody  murder.   A  big 
percentage  of  those  you've  got  to  dig  up  the  plant  and  look  at 
not  only  the  bulb,  but  at  the  roots.   That's  just  too 
destructive.   I  don't  like  that. 

Riess:     Back  to  the  general  question  of  books  and  keying  things,  is 
Helen  Sharsmith's,  for  instance,  a  totally  separate  system? 

Roderick:   No.   With  Sharsmith  and  all  those  smaller  floras,  generally 

speaking,  the  keys  are  quite  simple,  and  they  have  kept  them  to 
their  areas  that  they  wrote  on.   For  instance,  like  with  Mary 
Bowerman  on  Mount  Diablo,  you  can  use  her  book  for  other  areas 
around  that,  but  it  is  written  strictly  for  Mount  Diablo.   Her 
keys  are  more  simple,  so  you  are  in  deep  trouble  if  you  try  to 
use  it,  say,  over  in  the  foothills  of  the  Sierra  Nevada,  because 
there  are  different  species  over  there.   It  doesn't  go  into 
detail  enough  to  break  it  down  for  the  whole  state.   There's  a 
lot  of  these  floras  that  way  that  are  just  elegant,  but  they  are 
strictly  for  their  one  little  group  area. 

Riess:      I  guess  that's  kind  of  a  godsend. 

Roderick:   It's  heavenly  when  you  go  into  a  given  area  and  you've  got  a 
book  for  that  area.   You  don't  have  to  go  through  dozens  of 
species,  like  in  Munz  or  Jepson,  till  you  get  to  what  you're 
interested  in  finding. 

Riess:     On  my  earlier  question,  why  did  they  end  up  being  called 

California  natives  rather  than  called  California  wildflowers? 

Roderick:   I  never  stopped  to  think  about  that.   I  don't  know.   Do  you  want 
me  to  call  Jepson  Herbarium?   I'd  get  an  answer  right  away  from 
them! 


Riess:     I  won't  let  you  get  away  from  me  right  now.   I  don't  want  you  on 
the  phone.   They'll  have  twenty  questions  for  you  if  you  have 
one  for  them!   [laughs] 

Do  other  states  call  their  native  flora  "natives,"  or  in 
fact  do  other  states  even  look  at  their  flora  in  such  a  way? 

Roderick:   I  think  one  of  the  reasons  maybe  that  we  call  this  "native"  is 
because  we  are  the  only  place  in  North  America  with  a 
Mediterranean  climate.   We've  got  summer  drought.   This  brings 
our  endemics  up  to  such  a  high  number  that  they're  found  no 
other  place  in  the  world.   In  a  good  percentage  of  the  other 
states,  their  florals  go  from  one  state  to  another  and  are 
widespread  that  way,  while  here  so  many  are  restricted. 


117 


Riess:     I  wonder  if  it  was  some  of  those  early  English  collectors,  in 
fact,  who  maybe  first  designated  these  as  the  native  plants  of 
California. 

Roderick:   I  really  can't  tell  you.   I've  never  gone  into  that.   You're 
going  to  cause  me  trouble.   I'm  going  to  get  my  nose  into 
everything  now  trying  to  find  out  something  about  it!  [laughs] 

Riess:     Good!   I  like  that  attitude.   That's  great. 

You  showed  me  a  picture  of  you  reading  what  looked  like  a 
new  copy  of  Hardy  Californians  [by  Lester  Rowntree,  Macmillan, 
1936] .  Does  Lester  Rowntree  do  a  key  in  that? 

Roderick:   No,  she  doesn't.   She  wrote  about  them,  and  she  was  very  good  at 
that- -her  beautiful  descriptions. 


Styles  of  Writing  and  Speaking  about  Horticulture 


Riess:     That  reminds  me  of  a  question  I  may  have  brought  up  earlier,  but 
I'll  bring  it  up  again,  and  that  is  about  horticultural  writing 
styles,  how  to  write  about  flowers,  and  use  restraint  with  the 
adjectives.   There  are  varying  schools  of  thought  about  that,  I 
gather.   Some  people  want  the  writing  pretty  cut  and  dried. 

Roderick:   With  me  writing  is  very  difficult.   If  I  get  information  down, 
that's  good.   If  I  get  flowery  as  well,  it's  unbelievable.   I 
have  a  hard  time  using  a  lot  of  adjectives. 

Riess:     And  that's  what  Lester  Rowntree  was  good  with? 

Roderick:   She  wrote  beautifully.   Beautiful  prose,  as  well  as  good 

adjectives.   I  wouldn't  say  flowery,  but  very  nice,  easy 

reading,  and  with  good  enough  adjectives  that  helped  you  really 
see  the  plant. 

Riess:     Is  it  a  way  to  tell  the  professionals  from  the  amateurs? 

Roderick:   No.   Generally  speaking- -now  I'm  thinking  in  botanical  terms 
again- -most  of  the  professionals  that  I  know,  the  ones  with 
master's  degrees  seem  to  write  much  more  beautifully  than  the 
ones  with  Ph.D.s.   But  again,  I  think  they're  thinking  in  very 
fine  details  rather  than  a  good  overview  of  the  whole  thing. 
But  there's  also  a  lot  of  variation  in  that. 


118 


Riess : 


For  instance,  with  Bob  Ornduff--.   I'm  absolutely  wild  over 
that  guy.   He  not  only  knows  his  botany,  but  he  also  knows  how 
to  take  care  of  the  plants --his  horticulture  is  very  good.   When 
he  was  director  at  UC  Botanical  Garden,  the  only  difference 
between  his  thoughts  and  my  thoughts  were  that  I  had  to  think 
small  of  what  I  could  do,  and  he  had  always  thought  big  of  what 
would  look  nice.   We  had  a  big  joke  out  of  it.   In  fact,  the 
other  day  we  mentioned  something  like  this,  and  we  were  laughing 
again  about  it.   I  had  to  think  of  what  I  could  do,  rather  than 
what  would  be  nice  to  have.   He  writes  quite  well,  too. 

I  think  the  greatest  of  all  these  writers  was  John  Thomas 
Howell,  his  lectures  as  well  as  his  writing.   Whenever  he  would 
use  a  technical  term  he  would  explain  it.   "That  means--." 

How  does  he  fit  in? 


Roderick: 


Riess : 


He  was  head  of  the  California  Academy  of  Sciences  Botany 
Department.   He  came  in  under  Alice  Eastwood  in  the  early 
thirties,  and  he  outlived  her.   He's  still  alive.  Very,  very 
ill,  very  unhealthy,  hardly  gets  out  of  his  rest  home  now  at 
all.   Elizabeth  McClintock  took  over  from  him.   But  what  a 
gentleman!   He  was  the  botanist  on  the  Crocker  Expedition  to  the 
Galapagos  in  the  early  thirties.   So  he  has  a  great  deal  of 
information  and  things  he  can  tell  you  about. 


Maybe  slides  have  become  a  kind  of  crutch  for  people, 
thousand  words . " 


"Worth  a 


Roderick: 


Riess : 


That  could  be. 
at  writing. 


It  definitely  would  be  me,  because  I'm  so  poor 


I  had  to  write  an  article  years  back  for  the  California 
Horticultural  Society- -some  of  us  at  the  UC  Botanical  Garden 
were  asked  to  write  articles  for  one  issue  they  were  going  to 
have  on  the  Botanical  Garden.   The  editor,  who  was  a  very  nice, 
I  guess,  editor --some thing  came  up  after  the  journal  had  been 
published,  and  I  said,  "Piro  Caro,  I  certainly  feel  sorry  for 
you  having  to  have  my  stuff  to  work  with  compared  to  Dr. 
[Helen-Mar]  Beard." 

He  said,  "Her  writing  is  so  perfect,  it's  dull!  Yours  is 
so  horrible,  it's  magnificent!"  I've  never  forgotten  that.  I 
used  to  be  told  how  horrible  a  writer  I  was,  and  that  I  didn't 
have  the  education,  and  "You  can't  do  this,  you  can't  do  that!" 

Yo*  were  probably  pretty  traumatized  by  being  told  that  too  many 
times . 


119 


Roderick:  Yes.   Then,  to  have  Piro  Caro  telling  me  it  was  delightful. 
Riess:     Who  was  he? 

Roderick:   Piro  Caro.   Owen  Pearce  was  the  head  of  the  Horticultural 

Society's  Journal .  but  Piro  did  the  actual  work,  I  think.   I 
think  he  cleaned  it  up  and  gave  it  to  Owen.   I  think  that  was 
the  way  it  worked.   I'm  not  sure  about  that.   Gosh,  that's  going 
back  a  couple  of  years! 


Know -How 


Riess:     In  your  experience,  is  there  a  traditional,  not  enmity  but  a 
sort  of  turf  war  between  the  botanists  who  would  head  these 
arboreta  and  the  horticulturists? 

Roderick:   Well,  Dr.  Herbert  Baker  was  a  very  poor  director  for  the  one 

reason  that  he  didn't  know  anything  about  horticulture,  and  you 
couldn't  get  anything  over  to  him.   [Watson]  Laetsch--you  know 
my  thoughts  on  him.   Then  Ornduff- -that' s  why  I  like  him  so 
much- -all  of  a  sudden,  here's  somebody  that  can  see  all  these 
different  things . 

Riess:     I  wondered  if  you  heard  about  it  from  other  people  in  your 

profession  who  felt  that  they  were  always  having  to  educate  the 
botanists . 

Roderick:   I'm  thinking  of  so  many  different  ones.   Roy  Taylor,  he's  way  up 
in  Chicago  with  a  botanic  garden.   He  was  awful  nice.   He  seemed 
to  have  a  good  idea,  a  rounded  idea,  on  horticulture,  as  well  as 
the  botany.   I'm  trying  to  think  of  a  couple  of  the  other 
persons  that  I  have  met. 

Riess:     How  about  the  people  at  the  Santa  Barbara  Botanic  Garden  or 
Rancho  Santa  Ana? 

Roderick:   Those  all  seem  to  be  very  good.   One  time  many,  many  years  back, 
Percy  Everett,  who  was  the  head  of  the  horticulture,  said  that 
here  he  thought  he  knew  it  all,  but  that  the  Mexican  help  would 
not  like  the  spot  he  had  pointed  out  to  plant—he  said  they 
always  planted  in  dozens  or  hundreds,  they  like  to  plant  in 
masses  down  there --and  they'd  sneak  out  two  or  three  and  plant 
them  where  they  thought  they  could  do  better.   He  said  that 
invariably  they  did  better. 


120 


He  said  that  he  got  to  the  point  with  his  Mexicans, 
especially  the  foremen,  where  he'd  say  to  them,  "This  is  where 
we'd  like  to  have  them.   What  do  you  think  about  the  soil?"   He 
said  he  learned  a  whole  lot  from  those  Mexican  people. 

It  was  more  or  less  the  same  way  with  Myron  Kimnach  at  the 
Huntington.   I  never  really  talked  to  him  about  this,  but  he 
said  that  when  he  figured  out  where  something  should  go  he'd 
then  tell  the  Mexican  help  there  that  he'd  like  to  see  these 
here  and,  "What  do  you  think?"  They'd  go  over  that  a  little 
bit.   He  had  third  generation  help  there  at  Huntington  Gardens. 
He  was  quite  proud  of  this. 

When  Myron  Kimnach  took  the  job  of  director  down  at  the 
Huntington,  his  mother  was  getting  quite  elderly.   Myron  and  I 
had  hit  it  off  good,  and  I  got  to  meet  his  mother.   I  had  dinner 
there  several  times  before  he  got  the  job  down  there.   When  she 
got  so  ill  and  had  to  go  to  the  hospital  and  fell  and  broke  her 
hip  and  was  never  able  to  take  care  of  it,  I  watched  out  for  her 
for  ten  years  in  rest  homes  and  everything  till  she  died.   I'm 
very  pleased  that  I  was  able  to  help  Myron  out  some. 


England:   E.B.  Anderson.  Chris  Brickell  Alice  Moore 


Riess:     Before  we  had  the  tape  recorder  on  you  told  a  story  which  in 
maybe  an  abbreviated  form  you  should  tell  again,  because  it 
opens  the  door  to  your  foreign  connections.   You  were  talking 
about  Marge  [Margedant]  Hayakawa  and  some  seeds  from 
Czechoslovakia.   So  my  question  is,  when  did  you  become 
international,  and  how  did  that  happen? 

Roderick:   I  think  it  started  instantly  after  I  went  on  my  first  foreign 
trip. 

Riess:     When  was  that? 

Roderick:   That  would  have  been  in  1963.   Margaret  Williams  had  gone  to  the 
International  Rock  Garden  Society  Conference  in  England  in  '61. 
She  met  E.B.  Anderson,  and  she  invited  a  lot  of  these  people 
over,  and  he  took  her  up  on  it.   He  came  over  in  '62.   I  had 
collected  a  lot  of  our  native  bulbs  for  him.   That  meant  I  had 
to  help  take  him  around  and  show  him  California,  and  of  course 
he  wanted  to  see  mostly  our  native  bulbs. 

Riess:     You  were  up  at  UC  then? 


121 


Roderick:  Yes. 

Riess:     He  had  contacted  you  ahead  of  time  saying,  "Please  collect--"? 

Roderick:   No,  I  told  Margaret  what  I  would  do  for  her  I  would  do.  for  him. 
He  thought  I  was  going  to  just  have  one  thing  for  him,  but  I  had 
quite  a  few. 

After  he  left  California  he  was  a  guest  of  the  Agricultural 
Department  of  the  United  States,  and  they  took  care  of  his  bulbs 
and  everything  for  him  while  he  was  there  with  them  in 
Washington,  D.C. 

Riess:     E.B.  Anderson—what  was  his  position? 

Roderick:   He  was  a  great,  great  plantsraan  of  the  world.   He  had  a  Victoria 
Medal  of  Honor,  which  is  the  highest  honor  that  the  Royal 
Horticultural  Society  can  give  out.   It  has  to  be  only  to  an 
Englishman,  and  there  are  only  sixty-three  of  these  persons, 
which  is  the  number  of  years  that  Victoria  reigned.   It's  the 
highest  honor  in  England  you  can  get. 

Riess:     Now,  a  plantsman— is  that  the  same  as  a  horticulturist? 

Roderick:   Yes.   But  he  specialized  mostly  in  bulbs.   This  one  friend- -he 
died  quite  a  few  years  back—he  said  he  never  was  to  E.B. 
Anderson's  garden,  except  in  the  wintertime.   Mr.  Anderson 
always  gave  him  hell  about  this,  and  he  said,  "Where  in  the 
world  can  you  go  and  see  so  many  labels  per  square  inch  of  rare 
and  unusual  things!"  [laughter] 

Riess:     You  had  been  collecting,  and  when  he  came  you  had  dry  bulbs  for 
him? 

Roderick:   No.   I  had  them  mostly  in  pots  in  loose  soil  so  they  could 

easily  be  dumped  out.   I  had  about,  oh,  thirty,  forty  different 
collections. 

Of  course  he  was  interested  in  bulbs.   What  Margaret  did 
was  to  bring  him  up  to  UC  Botanical  Garden.   This  is  when  I  had 
so  many  big  batches  of  bulbs  already  going.   He  said  that  my 
boxes  were  drier  than  his  desert  plot.   I  said,  "It  is  fine, 
more  or  less,  and  the  boxes  are  still  moist."  After  he  went 
home— he  lived  in  the  Cotswolds,  and  of  course  they  had  Cotswold 
stone  walls  all  over- -he  tore  off  the  top  of  one  wall,  cut  the 
stones  in  half,  and  laid  them  back  up  there  so  there  was  only 
about  a  three -inch  space  in  the  center.   He  filled  that  with 
loose  soil,  and  he  planted  a  lot  of  these  up  there,  and  they 
were  growing  very  well  from  then  on. 


122 


Riess:  How  beautiful.   Did  you  ever  get  to  see  that? 

Roderick:  Oh,  yes.   I  was  his  house  guest  about  three  different  times. 

Riess:  After  that  visit  over  here  in  1963,  you  say--. 

Roderick:  I  went  over  there  in  '63.   He  was  here  in  '62. 

Riess:     I  see.   And  that  was  the  beginning?  What  happened?  Do  you 
still  trade?  Do  you  go  in  your  own  interest? 

Roderick:   All  of  my  foreign  trips  have  been  made  on  my  own  time,  my  own 
money.   That  first  time  I  went  over  I  wrote  to  the  Royal  Hort 
saying  that  I  had  all  these  different  kinds  of  woody  plant 
seeds,  as  well  as  other  plants,  and  were  they  interested? 

They  had  never  heard  of  this  person  [me]  before.   They 
called  from  the  main  office  out  to  Wisley.   The  fellow  out  there 
said,  "Gosh,  arriving  here  on  a  Saturday!   What  are  we  going  to 
do?  We'll  get  that  new  employee,  whatever  his  name  is,  the 
botanist,  Chris  Brickell.   Tell  Mr.  Brickell  to  meet  this 
fellow."  Well,  now  he  is  the  general  manager  of  the  whole 
organization,  the  highest  paid  person  of  the  Royal  Horticultural 
Society.   We  went  out.   He  took  us  around  a  little  bit  to  show 
us  some  of  the  garden. 

Riess:     Who  were  you  travelling  with? 

Roderick:   We  had  here  at  UC  Berkeley  Alice  Moore,  one  of  the  world's 
authorities  on  cement.   One  of  our  scientists  in  the  Hearst 
Mining  Building  had  made  a  new  cement,  but  couldn't  control  it. 
It  was  expanding  and  not  contracting  and  was  not  stable.   She 
was  brought  over  to  control  this.  Well,  she  loved  lilies.   She 
arrived  in  Berkeley  on  a  Friday  night.   Saturday  she  found  an 
apartment.   Sunday  she  furnished  the  apartment.   And  on  Monday 
morning  she  went  up  the  Botanical  Garden  to  see  lilies,  and  this 
is  how  we  met. 

We're  still  very  dear  friends.   She's  retired  now.   But  she 
also  loved  acacias,  because  they  couldn't  grow  them,  and  before 
she  retired  she  bought  a  nice  chunk  of  land  on  the  Isle  of  Wight 
where  the  acacias  have  already  gone  wild.   She  had  to  clear  the 
garden  of  a  lot  of  them. 

Anyhow,  she  picked  me  up  at  the  airport  and  took  me  to 
Wisley,  and  we  went  out  and  looked  around  the  garden.   Goodness, 
here  was  the  most  beautiful  Pulsatilla  in  full  bloom.   I  got 
down  with  my  camera  to  take  pictures.   I  took  two  or  three 


Riess: 


Roderick: 


Riess: 


123 


pictures.   I  guess  there  must  have  been  a  startled  look  on 
Chris's  face.   I  started  to  stand  up  and  I  heard  Alice  say, 
"Well,  you  know,  this  is  something  I  guess  they  can't  grow  in 
California."   I  said,  "No.   We  can  get  one  flower  it  a  time  on  a 
plant,  and  here  you  have  about  twenty  flowers  on  this  one."  He 
said,  "Well,  it  is  a  poor,  wishy-wash  color,  and  we  haven't 
pulled  it  out  yet." 

This  told  me  that  yes,  I'm  in  a  completely  different  kind 
of  a  climate,  part  of  the  world,  everything.   So  from  then  on  we 
got  to  talking  on  plants,  and  I  would  tell  him  what  I  thought, 
what  we  did  here,  and  then  he  would  tell  me  what  they  did  there. 
This  is  how  we  got  acquainted.   Doors  started  to  open  up  a 
little  bit.   Nowadays  I  have  to  go  to  England  without  letting 
anybody  know  if  I  want  to  have  some  time  to  myself. 

Is  there  so  much  they  can  learn  from  you?   Is  that  it? 

Well,  I  have  sent  so  much  seed  over  of  all  these  different 
things.   Like  yesterday,  I  got  a  package  of  cuttings  sent  off  to 
the  Royal  Hort  of  things  I  knew  that  they  wanted.   I'll  get  a 
letter  in  a  couple  of  weeks  saying,  "Gee,  what  a  surprise!   I 
got  cuttings  from  you  today." 

When  the  English  took  California  plants  back  to  England  did  they 
call  them  "California  natives?"  When  you  go  to  Wisley  can  you 
see  a  whole  stand  of  something  identified  as  California  natives? 


Roderick:   They  try  to  grow  them  in  a  spot  where  they  think  that  they  can 
give  them  certain  kind  of  conditions.   For  instance,  at  Wisley 
they  have  a  special  hothouse  for  alpines,  for  dry  growing.   Same 
at  Kew.   At  Kew  they  have  big  hothouses  just  for  the  dry  things. 
This  last  spring  when  I  was  there,  the  fellow  that  was  over  that 
had  one  section  for  Calachortus  and  another  section  for 
Erythroniums  and  another  section  for  something  else.   But  there 
is  wet  growing  as  well  as  dry  growing  of  these,  so  most  of  these 
things  have  to  be,  in  fact,  two  places  so  they  get  the  attention 
and  that  particular  kind  of  a  growing  condition  that  they 
require . 

It's  such  a  pleasure  to  go  to  those  big  outfits  and  see  the 
care  that  they're  giving  the  seed  I  sent  over. 


Collecting  and  Sharing  Bulbs## 


Riess:     When  you're  over  there,  do  you  consult  with  Thompson  and  Morgan 
or  any  of  the  British  seed  companies? 


124 


Roderick:   No,  I  don't.   I  have  nothing  to  do  with  them  because  I  won't 
collect  that  amount.   You  know,  if  I  collect  a  teaspoonful  of 
seed  I  consider  that  a  quite  a  batch.   Yes,  in  the  past  I  have 
collected,  say,  bulky  seed- -a  cupful.   That  sounds  like  a 
tremendous  amount,  but  when  you  break  it  down  to  match  up  a 
small  seed,  it  isn't.   I  try  my  best  never  to  take  more  than  one 
percent  of  the  seed  in  a  given  patch. 

Riess:     They  have  their  own  seed  fields? 

Roderick:   They  probably  have  their  own  seed  fields,  or  more  likely  they 

have  small  amounts,  and  they  are  getting  that  from  persons  that 
have  grown  the  seed  themselves.   This  is  quite  often--.   I  know 
my  friends  now  that  come  over  here,  we've  collected,  or  I've 
sent  seed  to  them  or  bulbs.   To  these  special,  special  persons  I 
like  collecting  two  or  three  bulbs  of  something  and  sending  it 
to  them.   And  then  I  know  they're  going  to  get  the  special  care 
that  they  need,  and  then  they  will  hand  pollinate  to  make  sure 
they  get  good  seed.   It  takes  only  a  tiny  pinch  of  seed  to  give 
somebody  else  a  start. 

I  like  three  bulbs  when  I'm  collecting  bulbs,  for  the  one 
reason  that  that  way  you've  got  a  chance  that  one  might  not 
grow,  you've  got  the  other  two.   As  I've  said,  if  you  can't  get 
one  bulb  out  of  three  to  grow,  you  might  as  well  stop.   The 
other  thing  is,  if  you  do  get  three,  then  you  can  get  better 
cross-pollination,  more  vigorous  plants  from  seed. 

Riess:     It's  rare  that  I  let  anything  go  to  seed  because  I  keep  removing 
the  old  flower  heads.   Why  don't  people  plant  bulbs  by  seed? 

Roderick:   Because  they  take  time.   You've  got  to  figure  for  most  bulbs 
four  years  for  the  first  flower,  and  generally  five  and  six. 
With  trilliums  it  takes  two  years  to  get  the  seed  to  germinate, 
and  then  it  takes  anywhere  from  five  to  fifteen  years  to  get 
them  to  bloom.   Most  people  don't  like  to  wait  that  long.   This 
is  one  of  the  reasons  I  try  and  send  the  two  or  three  bulbs  to 
different  ones,  especially  like  Kath  Dryden  and  a  few  of  those. 

Riess:     Where  is  she? 

Roderick:   She  lives  just  outside  of  London,  north  of  London.   She's  a 

character  of  the  first  quality.   She's  a  long  bean  pole.   She 
says  that  she  was  born  in  the  poorest  part  of  London- -they 
didn't  even  have  a  toilet,  they  lived  on  the  third  floor,  no 
running  water,  no  electricity.   But  she  has  a  Victoria  Medal  of 
Honor,  she's  such  a  great  expert  on  bulbous  plants.   She  tries 
to  grow  everything  she  possibly  can  in  the  bulbs  of  the  world, 


125 


especially  Fritillarias . 
person. 


She  also  is  the  number  one  Lewis ia 


Over  there  they  have  this  organization  trying  to  keep  a 
collection  of  all  these  different  plants.   Different  persons 
take  and  try  to  grow  them.   Plus,  Kath  also  tries  to  keep  the 
collections:  anybody  that  wants  to  do  any  research,  she  can  give 
them  a  collection  or  at  least  plants  to  just  look  at  if  she  only 
has  one  of  such  things.   If  she  can  find  a  young  person  that's 
going  to  try  to  grow  these,  she'll  somehow  get  divisions  or 
starts  off  of  them  to  give  them  to  him. 

Riess:     Don't  people  do  that  here,  too? 

Roderick:   To  a  degree.   I'm  considered  the  wild  one  in  that  respect.   My 
plants  never  get  too  big  because  I  keep  giving  away  too  much. 

Riess:     But  that  kind  of  generosity  is  not  a  tradition  here? 

Roderick:   No.   The  way  I  look  at  it- -finding  these  young  people  and 

forcing  things  onto  them- -is  they're  the  horticulturists  of  the 
future.   Get  them  hooked  as  fast  as  you  possibly  can. 

Riess:     George  Waters  says  he  used  to  send  any  visitors  from  England  to 
see  you.   He  refers  to  somebody  named  Halliwell  from  Kew. 

Roderick:   Oh,  yes,  Brian  Halliwell.   Brian  just  retired  last  year.   He  is 
a  difficult  person  to  talk  to.   I  guess  he  is  really  more  of  a 
shy  person,  and  a  very  precise  person.   If  you  said  anything 
that  was  kind  of  humorous  that  could  go  two  ways,  he'd  take  the 
wrong  way  invariably. 

A  young  fellow,  Tony  Hall,  who  has  taken  over  from  him  most 
of  his  work,  couldn't  have  his  job  because  he  has  no  hearing 
whatsoever.   Tony  Hall  is  a  fine  plantsman  but  could  not  give 
the  lectures  or  anything  like  this  because  he  has  no  hearing. 
So  they've  hired  somebody  new,  and  I've  met  the  fellow,  but  I 
can't  even  tell  you  his  name  now.  We  were  more  or  less  passing. 

I  get  the  run  of  the  back  area  there.   But  those  real 
plantsmen,  you  can't  hardly  tie  them  down  for  a  minute  to  talk 
with  them.   They're  too  interested  in  their  work. 

Riess:     When  you're  talking  about  the  "back  area,"  are  you  talking  about 
Wisley  again? 

Roderick:  More  of  this  was  at  Kew.   They  have  lots  of  hothouses  that  are 
off-limits  to  the  public.   At  Wisley  they  have  only  a  small 
range  of  hothouses  that  are  off  to  the  public. 


126 


Riess:  Why  would  people  have  contacted  George  Waters? 

Roderick:  Well,  that  was  through  Pacific  Horticulture. 

Riess:  They  would  write  to  him  as  the  editor  of  the  magazine? 

Roderick:  Yes. 


Garden  Climate  and  Colors 


Riess:     Have  you  spent  time  at  Sissinghurst? 

Roderick:   I've  been  there  quite  a  few  times.   For  some  reason  or  other, 
I've  never  been  able  to  get  acquainted  with  the  woman  that's 
over  it,  but  everybody  else  says  that  this  is  nothing  unusual. 
But  I've  been  there  from  fairly  early  spring  to  early  fall.   I 
have  not  been  there  in  fall  coloring  at  Sissinghurst. 

The  middle,  the  biggest  part  of  the  garden,  has  never  been 
developed.   It  just  kind  of  looks  like  a  big  lawn  with  a  few  old 
fruit  trees.   This  is  what  the  average  public  sees.   But  early 
spring,  say,  first  week  of  April,  there  are  just  great  drifts  of 
daffodils  with  Fritillaria  meleagris.   Just  drifts  of  them.   The 
most  gorgeous  sight  you  ever  saw  in  your  life. 

In  October  —  I've  only  been  there  in  early  October,  not  mid- 
October,  which  I  think  would  be  better- -the  big  patches  of 
Colchicums  come  in  that  lawn  area.   Here  are  these  big  pink  and 
lavender  blobs  of  colors  throughout,  and  you  can  see  why  they 
would  never  let  anything  else  be  planted  in  the  area.   It's 
absolutely  breathtaking.   Vita  Sackville-West  and  Nigel 
Nicholson- -you  can  see  why  they  kept  that  so  plain,  and  you  can 
see  how  they  really  loved  plants  and  how  they  knew  what  they 
were  doing. 

Riess:     They  have  those  beautiful  stone  walls  setting  it  all  off. 

Roderick:  And  they  blended  their  colors  so  beautifully  and  kept  their 
different  little  gardens  to  certain  colors  so  they  wouldn't 
clash  with  other  areas.  It's  a  miracle  how  they  worked  out 
things . 

Riess:     I  think  about  color  in  California  as  orangy-yellow  and  blue, 
blue  sky  and  poppies  and  lupine. 


127 


Roderick:   Another  thing,  too,  are  your  climates.   It  seems  in  the  hotter, 
drier  climates  you  also  have  a  lot  of  hot  colors.   In  your  more 
mild  climates  you  do  have  more  delicate  colors.   England  would 
correspond,  say,  to  the  area  from  Eureka  on  north  where  you  have 
the  damp,  cool  climates. 

Most  cool  growing  plant  flowers  fade  in  hot  sun.   There's  a 
lady  in  San  Francisco  that  lives  right  out  practically  on  the 
beach.   They  have  dahlias.   With  dahlias  you  can  take  one 
variety,  a  main  variety,  and  you  can  plant  one  of  those  at  Elsie 
Mueller's  house  and  then  plant  one  here  at  my  house.   You  pick 
flowers  at  their  prime  and  bring  them  together,  and  you'd  swear 
they  were  two  different  varieties.   Just  that  intense  fog  all 
summer  long  makes  all  the  difference,  where  we  only  get  a  little 
fog  once  in  awhile. 

The  same  way  with  fuchsias,  and  a  lot  of  the  annuals  are 
this  way.   There  will  be  much  more  intense  color  here  in 
California  on  the  immediate  coast  where  there's  heavy  fog  than 
just  a  few  miles  inland.   But  the  zinnias  are  better  inland. 

Riess:     So  the  sun  just  — 

Roderick:   --bleaches  out  all  of  the  color  on  most  common  ground  plants. 

The  other  thing  is  how  the  acid  soil  works  on,  among  other 
things,  hydrangeas.   Here  we  can  only  have  pink.   Up  in  Eureka 
they  do  everything  they  can  to  get  pink  ones --they  can  only  have 
blue,  the  soil  is  so  acid.   And  again,  the  climate  is  so  mild. 


Turkey 


Riess:     You've  gone  further  afield  than  England.   You  were  recently  in 
Holland,  and  in  Turkey.   Is  it  always  bulbs? 

Roderick:   I  like  bulbs.   The  one  thing  I  wanted  to  see  —  and  I  was  in 

Turkey  at  the  right  time  —  I've  always  wanted  to  see  hyacinths  in 
the  wild.   We  finally  got  high  enough  on  one  mountain  to  find 
Galan thus— your  snow  drops- -still  in  bloom.   Just  four  flowers 
we  saw,  but  that  was  enough  to  satisfy  me. 

I  think  I  got  four  hyacinths.   They  were  everywhere,  but 
never  in  mass.   They  were  scattered.   Some  places  they'd  be  up 
to  a  foot  apart.   Other  places  there  would  be  one  here,  and 
you'd  go  fifty  feet  before  you'd  find  another  one.   They  were 


128 


almost  every  place  that  we  went,  but  more  on  the  Anatolia 
Plateau  and  into  the  mountainous  areas  to  the  western  part  of 
Turkey.   I  can  see  where  they  got  color  variations  in 
cultivation  right  away  because  there's  quite  a  variation  in 
color  in  the  wild. 

Riess:     Are  there  Turkish  horticulturists  who  are  avid,  or  is  this  an 
underdeveloped  interest? 

Roderick:   There  are  a  few,  but  I've  never  met  up  with  any  of  these.   The 

only  thing  I  can  tell  you  is  that  with  Crocus  the  Turks  dig  them 
like  mad,  not  for  beauty  but  to  eat  as  food. 

The  first  time  I  went  to  Turkey,  which  was  with  the  Alpine 
Garden  Society,  we  had  Brian  Matthews,  an  expert  on  Turkish 
bulbs  who  wrote  the  book  on  Turkish  bulbs,  with  us.   He  found  a 
Crocus- -he  wrote  the  book  Genus  Crocus .  so  he  knew  what  he  was 
talking  about --he  found  a  Crocus  that  did  not  belong  in  that 
area  whatsoever.   It  was  completely  different  from  the  regular 
Crocus.   He  could  tell  by  the  coating  on  the  bulb.   Instead  of 
being  like  paper,  it  was  like  a  fishnet. 

He  called  everybody  together  to  show  them  what  he  found. 
He  was  so  excited.   It  had  a  seed  pod  on  it,  and  you  could  see 
the  seed  on  it.   He  was  so  excited  about  finding  it.   It  was 
about  two  to  three  hundred  miles  out  of  place.   He  held  it  up  to 
show  this  netting- like  covering  over  the  bulb,  and  there  were  a 
bunch  of  Turkish  around  there,  and  this  one  fellow  reached  over 
and  grabbed  the  bulb  and  put  it  in  his  mouth  and  bit  it  in  half. 
At  the  same  time,  of  course,  Brian  was  reaching  over  trying  to 
save  his  bulb.   At  least  he  got  the  seed  pod  and  the  seed,  and 
he  now  has  about  five  or  six  seedlings  up.   In  another  three  or 
four  years  he'll  be  able  to  find  out  if  he  was  right  or  not. 

Riess:     What  a  ferocious  story! 

Roderick:   You  get  into  a  lot  of  those  crazy  things  when  you  go  to  foreign 
countries . 


Riess:     I  always  think  of  Crocus 
they  bigger? 

Roderick:   No. 


as  little,  low  plants.    In  Turkey  are 


This  last  trip,  another  reason  we  went  when  we  did  was  to 
see  Crocus  in  the  wild.   I  have  seen  pictures  of  fields  up  in 
the  mountains  of  Europe  solid  with  the  color  of  Crocus.   We 
never  saw  that.   They  were  scattered.   There  would  be  a  little 
clump  here,  there  would  be  a  flower  here,  a  flower  there, 


129 


another  little  clump.   When  I  mean  little --not  over  ten  flowers. 
Riess:     And  all  down  around  a  three  and  four- inch  height? 

Roderick:   Yes.   Some  of  them  were  maybe  up  to  three  inches.   The  littlest 
one  that  we  saw  was  the  cutest  little  thing.   A  nickel  would 
completely  cover  the  flower.   Little,  pale  yellow.   It  was  about 
an  inch -and- a- quarter,  maybe  an  inch-and-a-half  tall.   It  was  a 
cute  little  thing.   I  wouldn't  touch  any  of  those.   They  were 
all  up  in  the  snow  country.   Now,  in  Greece--. 

Riess:     Why  wouldn't  you  touch  them? 

Roderick:   You  couldn't  give  them  the  snow  covering. 

In  Greece  I  found  them  clear  right  down  to  almost  the  sea. 
I  did  bring  back  a  few  of  those,  and  I've  had  three  or  four 
collections  bloom.   I've  got  seed,  of  course,  and  I'm  waiting 
for  the  seed.   It  will  take  another  two  or  three  years. 


Comine  Through  Customs 


Riess:     Are  the  restrictions  on  mailing  seed  and  plant  material  a 
problem  for  you? 

Roderick:   I  let  my  import  permit  run  out,  and  I  haven't  taken  time  to 

renew  it.   I  generally  bring  my  stuff  home  with  me,  but  I  didn't 
do  that  for  Greece  or  for  Turkey.   I  was  in  Greece  too  long,  and 
some  of  these  plants  were  still  pretty  green.   I  needed  to  get 
them  to  be  potted  up  as  quickly  as  possible,  so  I  shipped  them 
by  mail. 

I  take  my  U.S.  Customs  label  with  me  and  put  that  on  them. 
I  wash  everything  carefully  and  make  sure  there's  no  soil,  and 
check  for  any  kind  of  pests.   So  far,  everything  has  come 
through.   Last  year,  coming  back  from  Greece,  I  brought  the  seed 
with  me  because  there's  no  problem  getting  seed  in. 

Riess:     You  don't  have  to  declare  it? 

Roderick:   I  declared  that  I  had  plant  material  and  seed. 

Riess:     They  have  a  huge  list  of  things  that--? 

Roderick:   Well,  I  knew  what  to  keep  away  from.   I  have  that  list  of  what 
you're  not  supposed  to  bring  in.   I  declared  this,  and  they 


130 


Riess: 
Roderick: 


called  the  plant  inspector,  and  in  the  first  package  of  seed 
they  opened,  here  was  a  beetle.   I  said,  "Oh,  my  God!"  Here  I 
went  through  everything  and  thought  I  had  everything  so  clean. 
The  fellow  said,  "Well,  we're  going  to  have  to  keep  it."   I 
said,  "No  problem." 

It  seemed  that  I  came  back  about  the  time  that  they  were 
having  vacation,  too,  and  they  were  short  in  the  agricultural 
department  over  at  the  international  airport.   So  I  gave  two 
weeks,  and  then  I  called  the  fellow,  and  I  said,  "Well,  I'll 
come  over." 

I  came  the  next  day.   He  still  was  so  swamped  that  he 
wasn't  able  to  get  to  them.   So  I  sat  there  and  helped  him.   I 
undid  my  packages,  handed  them  over  to  him.   He  inspected,  and  I 
folded  them  back  up  and  had  the  next  one  ready.   This  is  the  way 
it  went. 

I  got  to  like  the  fellow  very  much,  and  I  see  how  he  works, 
and  he  sees  how  I  work,  so  I'm  not  afraid  if  I  have  anything, 
especially  seed.   I'm  just  so  happy  if  he'll  take  care  of  it. 
We've  got  enough  pests  here  without  getting  anymore. 

Do  you  know  insects  very  well? 

No.   Of  course,  anything  that's  diseased  I  won't  even  touch  over 
there.   There's  so  much  nice,  interesting  stuff  that  generally 
speaking,  if  you  find  one  thing  and  you  can  see  it's  diseased, 
if  you  look  around,  you're  going  to  find  others  that  are  not. 

I  just  hope  that  there  are  a  couple  of  the  seeds  that  I 
brought  back  that  I  will  get  germination  on.   It  would  be  nice 
botanically,  but  some  of  them  would  be  nice  for  home  culture, 
too. 


Seed  Exchanging 


Riess:     Once  you  have  seeds  from  them  here,  what  do  you  do?  Do  you  take 
them  to  the  rock  garden  group,  or  do  you  just  take  them  to 
special  friends? 

Roderick:   No-  The  first  thing  I  do  is  for  the  three  botanic  gardens:  UC 
Davis,  UC  Berkeley,  and  UC  Santa  Cruz.   Those  persons  have  been 
so  nice  to  me,  why  shouldn't  I  do  something  nice  to  them? 

Riess:     You  keep  up  a  working  connection  with  all  of  them? 


131 


Roderick:   I  can  go  to  UC  Berkeley,  and  they  say  to  me,  "You  know  where  the 
keys  are.   If  you  want  to  go  in  that  hothouse,  go  get  them  and 
don't  bother  us."  Up  at  Tilden:  "Damn  it  all!   You  have  that 
set  of  keys.   I  don't  want  anything  to  do  with  them.   You  keep 
them  and  come  and  go  as  you  want."   I  think  it's  awful  nice  to 
have  that.   I  just  can't  hardly  believe  that  those  people  have 
been  so  nice. 

Riess:     What  are  you  most  actively  working  on  as  a  plantsman  these  days? 
I  know  you're  weeding  a  lot!   [laughs] 

Roderick:   Of  course  seed  collecting.   I  love  seed.   I  put  out  a  little 

seed  list.   I  have  Ron  Lutsko  on  my  list  now  for  the  one  reason 
that  he  is  young,  and  he  wants  to  get  a  lot  of  rare  and  unusual 
things  from  different  parts  of  the  world.   We  have  this  little 
seed  list  that  we  sent  around,  and  those  botanic  gardens  send 
their  list  in  exchange.  We  have  Ron's  address  on  it,  so  all 
those  things  go  to  him.   That  way  he  can  get  some  of  the  seed  of 
plants  that's  he  trying  to  find. 

Riess:     He's  a  landscaper,  isn't  he? 

Roderick:   Landscape  architect.   Goes  mostly  for  dry  or  drought- tolerant 
gardens.   Nicely  designed. 

Riess:     Are  you  saying  that  once  a  year  you  get  out  a  mailing  of  what 
you  have? 

Roderick:   We're  trying  to  keep  under  a  hundred  people. 
Riess:     Do  you  sell  or  exchange? 

Roderick:   We  exchange.   Quite  often  we  ask  if  they  have  a  dollar.   That 
covers  postage.   That's  all  we  ask  for.   If  they  can  do  that, 
we're  happy.   We  never  say  anything  about  the  cost  of  going  out 
and  collecting.   It  would  be  absolutely  unbelievable,  the  prices 
that  we  charge. 

We  had  a  couple  here  last  year  that  made  my  house  their 
home  address  for  the  four  months  they  were  here  from  England. 
They  go  to  different  parts  of  the  world  every  year  and  collect 
and  have  this  seed  selling.   They  get  up  to  five  pounds  sterling 
per  packet,  and  they  can  tell  you  about  how  many  seeds  you're 
going  to  get  per  packet,  too.   I  know  there  was  one  that  was 
four  and  a  half  pounds  for  the  one  packet.   That's  getting  close 
to  eight  dollars.   I  think  they  said  they  got  fifteen  seeds. 
But  they  have  to  figure  out  to  make  their  living. 


132 


Riess: 


Roderick; 


It  is  fun  to  have  some  seeds  that  you  know  that  somebody  in 
the  world  just  would  love  to  have  and,  oh,  how  thrilled  they 
are! 

Do  you  write  descriptions  of  your  seeds,  or  do  you  just  list 
them  by  name? 

We  put  our  list  down  by  the  scientific  name.   For  those  that  are 
in  a  botanic  garden,  then  we  do  give  them  field  data  and  let 
people  know.   Some  of  those  things  we  go  back  year  after  year 
for,  the  same  thing,  more  or  less  just  to  fill  space,  nothing 
else.   But  a  lot  of  people  ask  over  in  their  parts  of  the  world, 
"Where  did  this  come  from  precisely?"  They'll  have  a  map  so  I 
can  point  it  out  to  them. 


Awards 


Riess:     You've  gotten  many  awards.   From  the  American  Rock  Garden 
Society,  the  Le  Piniec  Award.   Why  did  you  receive  it? 

Roderick:   Le  Piniec  was  the  one  that  founded  a  famous  nursery  up  in 

Medford  called  Siskiyou  Rare  Plant  Nursery.   He  started  that, 
and  then  he  was  too  old  and  turned  it  over  to  two  persons,  and 
then  they  have  turned  it  over  to  two  more  persons .   He  was  a 
Frenchman  and  quite  a  plantsman  for  the  Siskiyou  Mountains.   He 
loved  those  plants  up  there. 

The  [Le  Piniec]  award  is  for  persons  that  have  continued 
trying  to  get  more  plants  into  cultivation  from  such  things  as 
this,  or  just  distributing  cuttings  or  writing  about  them  and 
taking  people  out  and  showing  them.   It  was  all  these  kinds  of 
things.   That  was  Owen  Pearce's  fault  that  I  got  that, 
[laughter] 

Riess:     Then,  the  Rixford  Award  from  the  California  Horticultural 
Society? 

Roderick:   That's  for  all  the  little  things  [one]  did  behind  the  scenes, 
for  persons  that  weren't  on  the  board.   That  was  before  I  was 
ever  on  the  board,  or  council,  as  they  call  that.   I  did  the 
seed.   I  was  on  the  plant  discussion.   I'm  still  on  the  plant 
discussion,  they  can't  get  rid  of  me.   They  say  I'm  nosy  about 
plants:  "As  long  as  you've  got  to  get  your  nose  into  it,  at 
least  get  up  here  and  talk  about  it,  if  nothing  else!"   [laughs] 

Riess:     Do  you  go  regularly  still,  and  take  plant  material? 


133 


Roderick:   Yes.   I'm  now  starting  to  slow  down.   I'm  having  problems  now. 

I'm  getting  too  old.   Car  lights  hurt  my  eyes.   I'm  not  going  as 
much  as  I  used  to.   But  up  until,  say,  two  years  ago,  in  the 
fifty  years  I've  gone  to  Cal  Hort  I've  only  missed  maybe 
fifteen,  twenty  times.   That's  one  of  the  ways  you  learn. 


Native  Plant  Study  Group:  Publication  Plans 


Riess: 
Roderick: 

Riess: 
Roderick: 


Linda  Haymaker  told  me  about  your  native  plant  study  group, 
did  that  start? 


How 


Riess: 
Roderick; 


Riess: 
Roderick: 


It  started  originally  with  California  Horticultural  Society  and 
eventually  went  to  the  Native  Plant  Society.  It  was  started  by 
Lester  Hawkins. 

And  that  was  about  1974? 

I  think  it  was  December  '72.   I  could  go  look  up  in  my  records 
and  tell  you  precisely.   The  first  meeting  or  two  I  had 
commitments  and  I  couldn't  meet  with  them. 

That  was  a  whole  group  of  persons.   There  were  about  twenty 
of  us  that  would  meet  and  talk  about  plants  of  horticultural 
value  that  were  native  to  the  state  of  California.   We  went  from 
the  book  from  A  to  Z. 

What  do  you  mean  by  "from  the  book?" 

I  mean  Munz.   It  was  Roman  Gankin  that  went  through  the  book. 
At  that  time  we  only  would  look  at  perennials  on  up  to  trees  and 
woody  plants.   He  went  and  eliminated  everything  of  the  annuals. 
That  saved  a  horrible  amount  of  work  alone. 

We  had  these  discussions.   We  started  at  A,  and  we'd  take 
each  genus,  two  or  three.   Sometimes  there  would  be  one  genus 
that  would  have  one  species.   That  only  took  a  few  minutes,  so 
we'd  keep  on  going  on  the  list,  and  we'd  keep  knocking  them  off. 

What  was  the  intention  in  doing  this? 

Having  a  book  eventually  on  the  plants  of  horticultural  value. 
Now  we're  down  to  just  about  ten  of  us  that  meet  quite 
regularly.   They  meet  at  my  house  most  of  the  time,  here  or 
Jenny  Fleming's.   We  are  finishing  up  on  the  monocots,  and  we're 


134 


ready  to  publish  our  first  book, 
had  a  heck  of  a  time--. 


We've  got  to  get  money.   We've 


Riess : 
Roderick: 


Riess: 
Roderick; 


Riess : 
Roderick: 


Riess: 
Roderick: 


When  you  started  out  you  had  a  book  in  mind? 

Yes,  just  for  all  the  plants  in  California.   But  we  found  out 
that  we  had  so  much  information  that  we  decided  we  had  to  break 
it  down  into  parts.   Unfortunately,  I  was  gone  in  Turkey  when 
they  had  their  last  meeting  on  what  they're  going  to  go  on  to 
from  this  one.   I  think  it's  going  to  be  on  some  of  our 
perennials,  like  the  penstemons  and  a  few  of  those  things. 

Anyhow,  we're  still  working  on  illustrations.   We've  got  an 
artist.   We've  got  to  get  our  line  drawings  done,  and  we're 
going  to  have  about  four  pages  of  pictures  from  colored  slides. 
We've  got,  we  think,  a  darn  good  book.   In  fact,  from  what 
little  bit  I've  said  about  it  in  England,  the  Alpine  Garden 
Society  wants  two  hundred  copies  right  now  for  their  book  sales. 

The  monocots  will  be  one  volume? 

Then  we're  going  to  start  on  perennials.   This  is  what  we  talked 
about  in  the  past.   Then,  we're  going  to  have  woody  plants. 

When  we  get  into  woody  plants,  we  think  we're  going  to  have 
to  break  it  into  two  volumes:  trees- -that's  probably  one  volume 
there.   But  we  don't  really  know.   It's  according  to  how 
ambitious  we  get. 

You  take  the  plants  one  by  one  and  describe  them? 

Yes,  and  what  we  think  about  them.   Some  of  them,  it  might  say 
they're  too  rare  and  endangered  and  they  shouldn't  be  tried. 
Some  of  the  flowers  are  so  zero  that  they're  of  no  economic 
value,  but  only  of  botanical  interest. 

Of  course  you  can  only  talk  about  them  in  California. 

Yes.   But  enough  of  our  members  know  our  climates  or  are  from 
distances  that  we  have  enough  information  for,  say,  over  in  the 
Sacramento -San  Joaquin  Valley,  or  coastal  areas.   We  are  having 
a  difficult  time  trying  to  bring  in  information  for,  say,  the 
Los  Angeles  basin  area.   That  makes  it  more  difficult. 


Riess: 


So,  what  about  these  people  in  England  who  buy  it? 
they  going  to  do  with  it? 


What  are 


135 


Roderick:   Just  to  find  out  for  sure  what  we  think  of  different  ones  and 

how  good  they  are.   Then  probably  they'll  haunt  me  to  try  to  get 
seed.   [laughter] 

f 

Riess:     I  read  some  of  the  minutes  of  the  group.   [looking  at  paper] 
Here's  a  meeting  held  at  the  Academy  of  Sciences. 

Roderick:   We've  met  all  over.   For  quite  a  while  we  met  at  such  places  as 
that,  and  at  the  library  at  Strybing,  because  of  our  large 
group  . 

Riess:     "Cultivars  of  California  Natives"-  -that  is  what  you  were  then 
calling  the  group? 

Roderick:   Various  names  that  way.   But  we  kind  of  kept  that  word 

"cultivars"  because  so  many,  like  Ceanothus  and  manzanitas,  we 
have  so  many  different  plants.   For  instance,  in  the 
Arctostaphylos  densiflora  there  are  about  four  different 
varieties  in  that  one  species.   So,  these  are  cultivars. 

Riess:     The  list  of  people  who  attended  meetings:   Elizabeth  McClintock, 
Betsy  Flack,  Suzanne  Schettler--. 

Roderick:  She's  still  with  us. 

Riess:  Ernest  Wertheim. 

Roderick:  He's  dropped  out  a  long  time  ago. 

Riess:  Tom  Bass. 

Roderick:  He's  dropped  out. 

Riess:  Alan  Bhrubaker. 

Roderick:  I  haven't  seen  him  in  a  long  time. 

Riess:  Nancy  Page. 

Roderick:  I  don't  remember  that  name. 

Riess:  Nancy  Page  from  Arnold  Arboretum 

Roderick:  Yes,  we  had  a  little  correspondence  with  her. 

Riess:  Bill  Day,  Jim  Hickey,  Leo  Gallegos. 

Roderick:  All  long  gone. 


136 

Riess:     Mike  Smith? 

Roderick:   Mike  was  forced  to  drop  out  because  of  his  business. 

Riess:     Marshall  Olbrich,  and  Lester  Hawkins. 

Roderick:   Marshall  doesn't  drive  at  night  anymore,  and  of  course  Lester  is 
dead. 

Riess:  Dick  Hildreth. 

Roderick:  Dick  is  in  Utah  now. 

Riess:  Judith  Skinner. 

Roderick:  I  don't  remember  that  name. 

Riess:  Kathy  Kipping  and  John  Kipping. 

Roderick:  It's  just  too  far  for  them  to  come. 

There  are  a  few  others  that  are  not  on  there  that  are  still 
active . 

Riess:     That  was  a  list  from  one  meeting.   At  that  meeting  you  looked  at 
sixty  slides  from  the  Rancho  Santa  Ana  Botanic  Garden  cultivars. 

Roderick:   At  that  time  there  was  also  a  Robert  Smaus  from  Sunset  Magazine 
from  southern  California  that  would  bring  either  the  specimens 
or  slides  up  from  Los  Angeles.   When  he  sent  slides  it  was 
probably  that  he  couldn't  make  the  trip.   That's  when  we  were  on 
Ceanothus  and  some  of  those  big  things  that  way. 

Elizabeth  McClintock  comes  up  from  time  to  time. 
Riess:     Roman  Gankin  is  on  this  list.   Also  Jake  Sigg. 

Roderick:   Yes.   Jake  has  written  the  introduction  to  our  thing,  and  it  is 
the  most  magnificent  thing  you've  ever  read.   Short  and  brief, 
but,  boy,  it  tells  everything! 

And  how  exciting  it  was  to  have  Lester  Hawkins  around. 
Lester  could  really  get  things  going,  but  he'd  get  frustrated 
thinking  of  other  things  and  forget  what  he  was  supposed  to  do. 
But  he  was  a  great  person. 

Riess:     David  Takahashi? 


137 


Roderick: 


Riess: 


Roderick; 


David  dropped  out  a  long  time  ago . 
year  or  two  at  the  most. 


He  was  here  just  for,  oh,  a 


Riess : 
Roderick: 


Riess: 
Roderick: 
Riess: 
Roderick: 


At  this  meeting  a  hundred  copies  of  each  of  the  meeting  notes 
had  been  printed  for  distribution.   Each  person  was  asked  to 
make  additional  notes  on  the  plants  discussed  by  the  group. 

I  did  all  the  reproduction.   I  had  an  in  with  one  of  the  copy 
outfits  here.   I  could  have  it  done  for  about  half.   There  would 
be  pages  and  pages  of  these  things,  you  know.   I  could  get  them 
done  cheaper  than  anybody  else. 

We  used  to  send  a  lot  of  these  to  southern  California. 
They'd  keep  them,  and  we  never  did  get  any  information  back  from 
them.   Nobody  ever  sent  us  anything  back.   Bob  Smaus  was  the 
only  person.   He  came  up. 

Beecher  Cramp ton. 
Yes,  on  grasses. 

Roz  [Rosamond]  Day  was  the  one  that  took  over.   She's  the 
one  wrote  up  our  grasses,  sedges,  and  rushes  for  the  book.   She 
still  comes.   She's  another  one  of  our  dolls.   And  we  have 
Caroline  Spiller  from  Marin  County,  too,  that  comes.   Caroline 
writes  gorgeous,  and  she  gets  carried  away  and  gets  way,  way  too 
much.   She's  so  great  that  we  can  tell  her,  "No,  we  can't  use 
that,  but  we  can  use  this,  we  can  use  this."   She's  still  just 
as  happy  when  we  cut  down  about  90  percent. 

Are  you  going  to  get  a  professional  editor? 
Oh,  everything  is  all  ready  to  go. 
You  are  your  own  editors. 

So  far  we're  our  own,  but  we  have  all  this  final  putting- 
together.   Again,  I  know  about  it,  but  I  can't  tell  you 
precisely  who.   A  good  help  is  Harlan  Kessell,  who  used  to  be 
with  UC  Press.   He's  got  it  set  up  for  who  we're  going  to  be 
working  with  for  this  book,  and  it's  a  fellow  that  only  works 
with  scientific  work,  or  something  of  this  nature.   The  fellow 
seems,  from  what  they've  been  telling  me,  absolutely  just 
thrilled  to  death  to  be  able  to  put  our  book  together.   But  we 
have  to  first  get  money. 


Riess: 


Where  would  you  go  to  for  money? 


138 


Roderick:   This  is  kind  of  out  of  my  field,  but  we  thought  we'd  try  maybe 
the  state  highways- -the  fancy  license  plates,  you  know.   Then, 
there's  an  English  outfit,  Stanley  Smith  Horticultural  Trust. 
They  have  about  two  or  three  other  ones  that  they're  going  to 
try. 

There's,  a  good  chance  that  Jenny  Fleming's  husband  can 
help.   He's  just  newly  retired.   But  before  he  can  do  anything, 
he  has  to  finish  a  book  for  Kaiser  Hospitals.   Then  he  can  have 
time.   He  knows  how  to  write  the  specs. 

Riess:     You  refer  to  Jenny  Fleming  often.   Tell  me  about  her. 

Roderick:   Well,  she  and  her  husband  built  their  own  house  here  in 

Berkeley.   They  have  an  all -California  native  garden.   Scott 
Fleming  isn't  so  wild  on  plant  material.   He's  more  sedate,  I 
guess  you  could  say.   He  likes  the  garden,  he's  very  fond  of  it, 
Jenny  gets  carried  away,  and  her  arms  are  flying  saying,  "Oh, 
this  is  the  greatest  thing,"  and  meanwhile  he'll  say,  "Yes, 
that's  a  nice  plant,  isn't  it?" 


"Doing  the  Flowers" 


Roderick:   I  got  into  all  kinds  of  crazy  things.  Way  back  when  we  had  the 
nursery  I  did  three  nightclubs  - -well ,  one  of  them  was  more  a 
restaurant  than  anything  else.   They  always  wanted  lots  of 
decorations.   I  don't  remember  how  it  got  started,  but  anyhow, 
the  owners  lived  not  too  far  from  where  I  was  born  and  raised.  I 
started  decorating  that,  and  I  got  into  more  and  more  of  this. 
Then,  when  I  still  had  the  nursery,  I  went  in  and  did  holiday 
decorations  and  demonstrations  for  the  public. 

Riess:     How  did  you  learn  that,  from  your  mother? 
Roderick:   From  my  mother.   She  was  a  professional  florist. 

When  I  came  down  here  the  University  found  out  about  this 
somehow,  so  I  had  to  do  all  the  flowers  that  went  from  the  UC 
Botanical  Garden  down  to  the  main  part  of  the  campus,  like  for 
the  Friday  seminar  in  the  botany  department  and,  once  in  awhile, 
special  bouquets  for  something  else.   Then  up  at  Tilden--!  don't 
remember  how  I  got  started  there,  but  somehow  at  the  Nature 
Center  we  started  to  work  up  holiday  decorating  workshops. 

Riess:     Using  natives? 


139 


Roderick:   Well,  roadside  weeds,  garden  prunings,  and  natives.   I  still 

have  a  lot  of  that.   In  fact,  my  parking  lot  is  partly  covered 
up  now  with  stuff  drying  for  the  holiday  decorating  programs. 

Riess:     I  saw  that  heap.   I  didn't  drive  over  it,  I  was  very  careful. 
But  what's  under  there? 

Roderick:   Most  of  it  is  dock.   It  was  just  the  perfect  stage  where  they 

will  hold  their  color,  but  the  seeds  aren't  ripe  and  they  won't 
drop.   They  drop  so  readily  if  you  don't  get  them  at  the  right 
stage.   So,  I  got  those  Monday. 

I'll  be  starting  to  head  up  into  the  Sierra  and  collecting 
cones,  and  certain  things  out  of  my  garden  I  can  take  and  dry 
and  keep.   This  afternoon  I'll  go  down  to  Ardenwood  and  see  what 
kind  of  limbs  have  dropped  off  the  trees  down  there  and  pick 
those  up.   They  have  interesting  pods  and  things  on  them.   Then 
I'll  go  up  to  UC  and  prune  some  of  their  trash- -I  go  into  their 
trash  pile  quite  often.   I'll  go  to  Ruth  Bancroft's  and  get  into 
her  trash  pile.   I  do  all  these  kinds  of  things!   [laughs] 

Riess:     When  you  do  the  classes,  you  come  with  all  of  the  materials 
yourself? 

Roderick:   Yes.  We  try  to  do  our  own  collecting  of  everything.   We  go 
around  for  greens,  and  we  prune  in  the  parks.   We've  got 
everybody  pretty  well  trained  that  certain  plants,  we'll  take 
and  prune  them  out  over  the  road  where  the  trucks  are  starting 
to  hit  them.   We'll  do  the  pruning  for  them  so  they'll  have 
that.   This  way  we  keep  the  people  from  going  out  and  doing 
destruction  outside. 

But  my  poor  basement!   You  can't  hardly  get  through  it. 
I've  got  piles  of  stuff,  and  this  year  I  haven't  had  the  time  to 
get  it  all  stacked  up  nice  and  neat.   It's  just  stacked,  and  the 
floor  hasn't  been  swept.   I've  got  to  clean,  but  I  haven't  swept 
it  yet. 


Compost 


Riess:     Well,  that  brings  us  to  the  whole  exciting  question  of  compost! 
When  is  your  pile  a  "collection  of  plant  materials,"  and  when  is 
it  "compost?" 


140 


Roderick:   My  compost  piles  are  not  so  very  good  because  I've  got  all  these 
redwood  trees.   The  only  place  where  I  can  make  compost  more  or 
less  hidden,  I  guess  you  can  say,  is  under  the  redwoods. 
Instantly  the  roots  are  all  up  through  it.   It  just  practically 
ruins  it. 

Riess:     Because  they  are  such  shallow-rooted  trees  anyway? 

Roderick:   Yes.   And  they  love  getting  up  into  needles  and  mulch.   They 

love  mulches.   It's  almost  impossible  to  break  it  up  enough  to 
get  the  good  stuff  out.   So  what  I  do  is  go  down  to  Wintergreen 
Nursery  with  all  of  my  buckets  and  get  into  his  dump  pile  and 
get  his  good  stuff,  which  is  just  like  perfect  compost. 

Riess:     Who  is  Wintergreen  Nursery? 

Roderick:   That's  Mike --or  Nevin- -Smith.   (There  are  too  many  Mike  Smiths, 
so  he  had  to  use  his  middle  name,  Nevin.)   He's  in  Watsonville. 
He  takes  lots  and  lots  of  my  excess  plants.   Then  I  can  help 
myself  more  or  less  to  anything  I  want  down  at  his  place.   That 
way  we  get  together  once  in  awhile. 

Riess:     Do  you  call  yourself  an  organic  gardener,  if  anyone  were  to 
bring  that  question  up? 

Roderick:   I  try  to  be  as  near  as  possible,  but  if  I  get  bad  pests  in,  I'm 
going  to  use  some  kind  of  materials  to  control  them.   Your 
organic  gardening  is  great,  but  when  you  do  get  a  bad 
infestation  of  a  pest  you've  got  to  do  something  to  keep  it  from 
going  from  your  place  to  the  neighbor's.   I  believe  you've  got 
to  use  common  sense,  with  a  lot  of  caution. 

Riess:     Do  you  do  things  like  bringing  in  ladybugs ,  or  are  you  talking 
about  chemicals? 


Roderick:  Yes,  you've  got  to  use  a  little  bit  of  chemicals.  But  if  you 
use  lots  of  humus  to  keep  your  plants  well -growing  you're  not 
going  to  get  too  many  diseases. 

On  top  of  that,  if  you've  got  lots  of  humus  in  your  soil- 
my  soil  is  at  least  a  quarter  humus,  more  like  half --then  you 
can  use  chemical  fertilizers,  because  the  plants  can't  absorb 
any  fertilizer  unless  it's  broken  down  to  the  simplest 
components,  which  is  what  the  humus  does  to  fertilizer  anyhow. 
So,  if  you've  got  plenty  of  humus,  you  don't  have  to  use  cow 
manure  and  horse  manure,  you  can  use  chemical. 


Riess: 


141 


But  I  don't  hardly  use  chemicals  except,  like,  on  my 
cymbidium  orchids.   I  use  these  little  pellets  that  slow- 
release  called  Osmacoat.   It's  expensive,  but  it  lasts.   I'm 
using  a  three-month  release  one.   Boy,  it  saves  from  having  to 
go  around  every  week  or  two  and  give  a  soaking  with  chemicals  in 
it.   If  you've  got  lots  of  animal  fertilizers  to  use,  great. 
I've  got  plenty  of  humus  that  I'm  getting  from  Wintergreen 
Nursery,  and  I  don't  even  really  hardly  fertilize  at  all  because 
I've  got  so  much  food  value  from  that  humus. 

On  top  of  that,  I  still  have  piled  out  here  some  old  horse 
manure  that  I  haven't  gotten  around  yet.   I've  moved  three- 
quarters  of  it,  and  I've  still  got  about  a  quarter  left  of  that 
pile.   Which  reminds  me,  my  mother,  when  she  was  still 
gardening,  for  her  birthday  got  her  load  of  cow  manure  every 
year.   That  was  what  she  wanted. 

Your  mother  sounds  quite  wonderful. 


Roderick:   She  was  a  character  of  the  first  quality. 
Riess:     Why? 

Roderick:   She  was  determined  that  she  was  going  to  have  a  darned  good 

garden,  come  hell  and  high  water.   And  for  her  neighbors  she'd 
quite  often  take  her  wheelbarrow,  and  some  of  her  compost  pile, 
with  a  plant  and  a  bunch  of  fertilizer  and  a  shovel,  and  take 
them  up  and  plant  them.   "Darn  it  all,  you're  taking  care  of  it 
This  is  what  you  need,  and  you're  going  to  have  it!" 

Riess:     Well,  she  sounds  inspirational,  and  this  sounds  like  a  good 
point  to  stop.   Thank  you  very  much. 


Transcriber:   Caroline  Nagel 
Final  Typist:  Merrilee  Proffitt 


142 


TAPE  GUIDE- -Wayne  Roderick 


Interview  1: 
tape  1 
tape  1 
tape  2 


Interview  2: 
tape  3 
tape  3 
tape  4 


Interview  3: 
tape  5 
tape  5 
tape  6 


April  30 
side  A 
side  B 
side  A 


1990 


tape  3,  side  B 


May  24, 
side  A 
side  B 
side  A 


tape  4,  side  B 


May  31, 
side  A 
side  B 
side  A 


1990 


1990 


tape  6,  side  B 

Interview  4:  June  6,  1990 

tape  7 ,  side  A 

tape  7,  side  B 

tape  8,  side  A 


1 

12 
24 
34 


37 
47 
57 
69 


77 

88 

97 

108 


114 
123 
134 


143 


APPENDICES 


A.  "Propagation  of  Native  Plants  with  Bulbs,  Tubers,  Corms ,          144 
Rhizomes,  and  Rootstocks,"  by  Wayne  Roderick  and  W.  Richard 
Hildreth,  Fremont ia.  Journal  of  the  California  Native  Plant 

Society,  Volume  3,  April  1975. 

B.  "The  1989  SPCNI  Spring  Expedition,"  Spring  1989  issue  of        154 
the  Society  of  Pacific  Coast  Native  Iris  Almanac .  pp.  7-10. 

C.  "Wildflower  Haunts  of  California,"  by  Wayne  Roderick,  158 
Bulletin  of  the  American  Rock  Garden  Society.  Vol.  48  (1) 

Winter  1990,  pp.  3-13. 


Appendix  A.   144 


Reprinted  from  Fremontia,  Journal  of  the  Cal 
Native  Plant  Society,  Volume  3,  April  1975. 


PROPAGATION  OF  NATIVE  PLANTS  WITH  BULBS, 
TUBERS,  CORMS,  RHIZOMES,  AND  ROOTSTOCKS 

by  Wayne  Roderick  and  W.  Richard  Hildreth 


Although  we  enjoy  them  today  for  their  colorful 
blooms,  many  of  our  native  plants  with  fleshy  under- 
cround  stems  were  once  an  important  source  of 
food.  Several  Indian  tribes  in  California  made  use 
of  the  bulbs,  tubers,  rhizomes,  and  corms  of  the 
monocotyledon  families  Liliaceae,  Amaryllidaceae, 
and  Iridaceae  as  part  of  their  food  supply.  Today, 
however,  if  large  numbers  of  people  tried  to  live 


Zygadene  (Zigadenus  fremonlii) 
Drawings  by  Margaret  Warrincr  Buck 


off  the  land  as  the  Indians  did,  the  survival  of  many 
plant  species  would  be  seriously  threatened. 

In  order  for  interested  gardeners  in  California  to 
enjoy  in  their  gardens  the  beauty  of  these  often 
difficult  to  grow  plants,  we  offer  suggestions  in  the 
present  article  for  propagation  and  culture  which 
may  improve  their  chances  for  success.  It  should 
be  emphasized  that  we  are  not  advocating  the 
heedless  harvesting  of  bulbs  (or  other  underground 
structures)  in  the  wild  to  satisfy  one's  "green 
thumb"  impulse.  Many  of  these  species  are 
extremely  rare,  while  some  are  endemic  to  a  highly 
specific  set  of  environmental  conditions,  and  our 
goal  should  be  to  protect  and  preserve  them  rather 
than  wantonly  to  destroy  them.  Opportunities  often 
arise  to  rescue  plants  in  sites  of  reservoirs,  roads, 
and  other  developments.  However,  conservation 
can  also  take  place  by  increasing  the  number  and 
distribution  of  individuals  through  knowledge  of  the 
techniques  of  propagation,  combined  with  an  under 
standing  of  the  plant  in  its  natural  habitat. 

Rare  and  endangered  species  should  be  left  alone 
— except  when  actual  removal  of  a  doomed  popula 
tion  is  approved  by  qualified  experts — and  even  seed 
from  such  species  should  not  be  taken.  In  the  case 
of  non-threatened  species,  where  collecting  is  per 
mitted,  only  a  small  part  of  any  population  or  its 
seed  should  be  taken.  Status  of  species  can  be 
checked  in  Inventory  of  Rare  and  Endangered 
Vascular  Plants  of  California,  recently  published 
by  the  California  Native  Plant  Society — an  in 
valuable  source  of  information. 

Most  of  the  species  to  be  discussed  in  this  article 
may  be  propagated  from  seed,  but  seed  is  not  always 
available,  viable,  or  easy  to  germinate.  Furthermore, 
the  time  to  flowering  is  usually  much  greater  from 
seedlings  as  compared  to  vegetatively  produced 
plants.  Seed  propagation  is  considered  in  detail 
later  in  this  article. 

The  vegetative  structures  referred  to  are  various 
modifications  of  an  underground  stem,  and  may  be 
defined  as  follows: 

Bulb  —  An  underground  leaf-bud  surrounded  by 
thickened  or  fleshy  scales  (which  are  food  storage 
organs),  and  often  covered  by  an  outer  coat  of  dry 
scales.  Example:  Lilium  pardalinum. 

Corm  —  A  short,  fat,  bulb-like  underground 
portion  of  a  stem.  The  solid  center  portion  of  the 


145 


Bulb 

Lilium  pardalinum 
Drawings  by  John  Kipping 


Corm 

Brodiaea  pulchella 


Rhizome 
Iris  douglasiana 


corm    is    composed    of   stored    food.    Example: 
Brodiaea  pulchella. 

Rhizome  —  An  underground  stem  or  rootstock 
with  scales  at  the  nodes,  producing  leafy  shoots  on 
the  upper  side  of  the  stem,  and  roots  on  the  lower 
side.  Example:  Iris  douglasiana. 

Tuber  —  A  thick,  so^d,  short  underground  stem 
with  many  buds.  Example:  Smilax  californica. 

Rootstock  —  Prostrate  or  underground  root-like 
stem,  with  herbaceous  shoots  appearing  seasonally 
and  bearing  roots  on  the  underside.  Example: 
Veratrum  spp. 


Nursery  Sources 

Sometimes,  by  searching  catalogs  and  visiting 
nurseries,  a  commercial  source  may  be  found  for 
certain  native  bulbous  plants.  Be  cautious  about 
buying    California    native    bulbs    from    European 
sources,   particularly  Erythronium,    as   they   may 
suffer  from  the  long  transit  and  being  out  of  the  soil 
so  long.  A  high  percentage  may  even  be  rotted  by 
the  time  they  get  to  the  sales  counter.  Bulbs  or 
growing  plants  in  containers  from  local  nurseries 
are  likely  to  be  more  successful— if  you  can  find 
them.  Native  lilies,  for  instance,  are  rarely  carried, 
because   most  gardeners  prefer  the  more  showy 
hybrids  from  the  Oregon  bulb  growers;  furthermore, 
most  native  lilies  are  difficult  to  grow.  On  occasion, 
Lilium  humboldtii  may  be  offered  for  sale.  Unfor 
tunately,  it  is  usually  packaged  in  a  sealed  plastic 
bag  and,  since  this  is  a  dry  bulb,  it  deteriorates  in 
just  a  few  days.  Reject  any  bulbs  with  soft  or  wet 
spots.  If  your  favorite  is  not  available  from  a  nursery 
or  catalog,  you  may  wish  to  consider  collecting  it 
in  the  wild. 


Collecting 

Remember  that  permits  are  required  to  collect 
any  plants  from  federal  or  state  land  and,  even  with 
permits,  there  are  restrictions  controlling  the 
removal  of  plants  or  plant  parts  from  certain  areas, 
while  some  plants  are  entirely  "off  limits."  On 
private  property,  it  is  advisable  to  have  written  per 
mission  from  the  owner  before  attempting  to  collect. 

Trillium,  Scoliopus,  Allium,  Iris,  and  Brodiaea 
species  are  relatively  easy  to  transplant  from  the 
wild  at  any  time,  even  when  they  are  in  bloom. 
Calochortus,  Erythronium,  and  Fritillaria  are  best 
collected  when  the  bulbs  begin  to  go  dormant,  about 
the  time  that  the  seed  matures. 

Stout  tools  are  suggested  for  digging,  such  as  a 
small  pick,  a  Combosco  trowel  (a  long,  narrow  and 


very  sturdy  implement),  or  even  a  screwdriver. 
The  greatest  difficulty  in  collecting  these  plants  is 
in  extracting  the  bulbs  from  the  soil.  Collecting  sug 
gestions  for  several  genera  and  species  follow: 

Trillium  —  Rootstocks  may  be  dug  when  the  plant 
is  in  bud,  in  flower,  or  in  seed  with  little  difference 
in  results  as  long  as  most  of  the  root  is  collected. 
Rootstocks  may  be  four  to  eight  inches  or  more 
deep,  and  it  is  important  to  dig  below  this  to  recover 
as  much  of  the  rootstock  as  possible.  Trilliums  gen 
erally  bloom  in  March,  and  they  transplant  readily 
at  this  time.  Of  the  three  species  of  Trillium  in  Cali 
fornia,  T.  chloropetalum  is  most  common  in  the 
wild,  T.  ovatum  less  so,  and  T.  rivale  is  so  rare  that 
few  people  ever  see  it  in  the  wild,  especially  in 
bloom.  Perhaps  fortunately,  this  latter  species  is 
next  to  impossible  to  pry  out  of  the  ground;  it  grows 
along  wet  stream  banks,  where  the  bulbs  grow 
wedged  between  rocks  and  roots  of  nearby  trees 
and  shrubs. 

Brodiaea  —  Most  brodiaeas  grow  in  heavy,  gritty 
clay  with  much  rock,  and  a  pick  would  be  useful 
for  digging.  Collecting  can  be  done  any  time  the 
plants  are  seen  in  April  until  the  seed  capsules  dis 
appear  in  July.  The  best  time  to  collect  is  probably 
after  the  foliage  has  died  down  and  the  seed  has 
matured,  since  the  bulbs  are  going  dormant  at  this 
time.  If  bulbs  are  dug  earlier  when  foliage  and  flowers 
are  present,  be  careful  not  to  remove  the  foliage 
when  transplanting;  otherwise  the  bulbs  may  not 
bloom  the  following  year.  Brodiaea  appendiculata 
is  a  wet-growing  species  and  prefers  to  be  kept  damp 
in  the  summertime. 

Calochortus  —  Dig  bulbs  in  May  and  June,  when 
the  last  flowers  are  fading,  the  seeds  are  maturing, 
and  the  stem  has  lost  most  of  its  green  color.  At  this 
time  the  bulbs  are  mature  and  ready  for  collecting. 
Watch  carefully  when  digging  through  rocky  soil  for 
calochortus;  often  bulbs  will  remain  dormant  for 
several  years  without  producing  foliage  or  flowers. 
When  digging  for  a  bulb,  search  through  the  dis 
turbed  soil  for  any  additional  dormant  bulbs  which 
may  be  present.  Calochortus  are  notorious  for  lying 
dormant  in  the  ground  for  several  years  without 
sending  up  even  a  single  leaf.  When  digging  for 
bulbs,  closely  examine  the  soil  removed  from  a  hole 
for  evidence  of  any  dormant  bulbs.  New  plants  for 
the  garden  can  easily  be  started  from  these  bulbs. 
In  some  areas  of  the  Mother  Lode,  the  senior  author 
has  dug  a  single  bulb  in  bloom,  only  to  discover 
seven  or  eight  additional  dormant  bulbs  in  the  same 
hole. 

Calochortus  uniflorus  is  found  where  it  gets  very 
wet  during  the  wintertime,  stays  wet  during  the 
spring,  and  generally  dries  out  in  the  late  summer 
time.  Little  difference  has  been  noted  in  gardens 


where  this  species  was  never  watered  and  where 
summer  irrigation  was  practiced.  Perhaps  more 
bulblets  were  formed  on  the  bulbs  which  were  not 
watered  in  the  summer.  C.  nudus  grows  in  wet 
meadows  near  little  streamlets  or  springs  in  the 
far  northern  part  of  the  state.  The  bulbs  grow  in 
continually  moist  soils.  Both  species  grow  well  in 
gardens  in  Europe,  where  summer  rains  are 
received. 

A  Ilium  —  Onion  bulbs  can  be  dug  almost  any 
time  they  are  found.  The  best  time  for  collecting 
would  probably  be  at  flowering  time,  since  color 
variations  are  common,  and  if  a  specific  color  form 
is  wanted  it  could  easily  be  seen  at  this  season. 
Vegetative  propagation  of  the  bulbs  would  ensure 
the  perpetuation  of  the  desired  colors. 

Erythronium  —  AdderVtongues,  or  fawn-lilies 
as  they  are  also  known,  are  probably  the  most  diffi 
cult  to  dig  from  the  soil.  The  bulbs  are  exceedingly 
brittle  and  shatter  at  the  slightest  touch,  the  remains 
then  being  of  little  use  for  propagation.  The  best 
time  for  collecting  bulbs  is  after  the  fruit  matures. 
In  digging  the  bulbs,  start  at  the  outer  edge  of  a  large 
colony  of  plants,  working  toward  the  center. 
Excavate  at  least  six  to  eight  inches  down,  digging 
carefully  underneath  the  bulbs  as  well  as  around  it, 
gradually  working  closer  and  closer  until  the  full 
length  of  the  bulb  is  exposed  and  somewhat 
loosened.  Place  four  fingers  beneath  the  bulb  and  lift 
upwards  gently,  hoping  for  the  best.  Any  shattered 
bulbs  may  be  left  in  place  for  possible  regeneration. 
(Or  take  this  opportunity  to  taste  a  piece  to  sample 
this  article  of  the  Indian's  diet.) 

Fritillaria  —  With  the  exception  of  F.  agrestis, 
biflora,  liliacea,  pluriflora,  and  striata,  most  Cali 
fornia  fritillaries  occur  in  soil  from  which  the  bulbs 
can  be  easily  dug.  The  exceptions  listed  grow  in 
exceedingly  heavy  clay,  and  a  good  heavy  pick  is  a 
handy  tool  for  extracting  them.  The  clay-growing 
types  shatter  very  easily  and  one  must  work  around 
the  bulbs  with  a  delicate  instrument  like  a  narrow 
trowel  or  a  heavy-duty  screwdriver.  Gently  pry 
away  chunks  of  clay  from  around  the  bulb,  being 
careful  not  to  crush  it. 

Bulbs  are  best  collected  during  the  month  of  May 
when  the  seed  is  mature.  At  this  time  the  foliage  and 
stems  are  drying  up,  the  bulb  is  fully  mature  and 
ready  to  go  dormant.  Quite  often  when  the  stem  is 
bent  or  touched  even  slightly,  the  whole  top  of  the 
plant  separates  from  the  bulb.  No  harm  is  done; 
however,  if  the  bulbs  are  dug  while  in  flower,  it  may 
take  two  or  three  years  to  recover  strength  enough 
to  bloom  again. 

Fritillaria  purdyi  is  almost  impossible  to  collect 
as  bulbs  in  the  wild,  because  the  bulbs  are  wedged 
in  between  layers  of  rock  and  are  easily  damaged  if 


147 


the  rock  is  moved.  It  would  be  much  wiser  to  collect 
a  bit  of  seed,  rather  than  risk  damaging  the  bulbs. 
Garden  requirements  for  this  species  are  very  diffi 
cult  to  duplicate  and  the  plants  tend  to  be  rather 
short-lived  in  cultivation.  Fairly  good  results  have 
been  obtained  by  planting  bulbs  or  seedlings  in  a 
combination  of  a  basic  soil  mix  (equal  parts  of  sand, 
redwood  sawdust,  and  leaf  mold)  supplemented 
with  an  equal  portion  of  road  rock — crushed  pieces 
about  one-inch  in  diameter. 

In  the  same  general  areas  where  F.  purdyi  is  native 
one  will  find  F.  glauca  growing  also.  Even  when 
native  soil  has  been  brought  into  the  garden,  results 
with  this  species  have  been  very  poor.  Out  of  many 
separate  collections,  only  five  or  six  bulbs  remain, 
generally  with  only  one  flower  a  year.  South  of 
Livermore,  growing  in  a  very  loose  scree  soil,  one 


Soap  Plant  (Chlorogalum  pomeridianum) 


may  find  F.  falcata.  The  bulbs  may  be  dug  very 
easily,  but  their  survival  in  the  garden,  even  with 
native  soil,  has  been  disappointing.  Seed  propaga 
tion  of  this  and  the  previous  two  species  may  be  a 
better  means  of  obtaining  plants. 


Seed  Propagation — Collecting 

During  the  season  when  mature  seeds  may  be 
collected  in  the  wild  or  from  a  garden,  it  may  be 
difficult  to  recognize  the  desired  plant.  Rather  than 
the  lush  foliage  and  beautiful  flowers  so  familiar  in 
the  spring,  only  shriveled-up  leaves  and  dry  stalks 
may  be  visible  in  the  arid  summer.  However,  plants 
may  be  labeled  or  even  mapped  during  full  bloom, 
so  that  seed  can  be  easily  collected  on  a  later  visit 
when  the  same  location  looks  so  changed.  The  fruit 
containing  the  seeds  should  be  harvested  before  the 
capsules  dehisce;  otherwise  the  seeds  will  be  scat 
tered  by  the  winds  or  devoured  by  birds  or  mammals. 
Often  the  capsules  may  be  inhabited  by  hungry 
larvae  of  various  insects.  It  is  possible  with  some 
species  to  pick  a  stalk  containing  immature  fruit, 
place  it  in  water  in  a  container  in  a  sunlit  spot,  as  on 
a  windowsill,  and  within  a  few  days  to  obtain  fresh 
ripe  seed. 


Storage  and  Germination 

Although  seeds  of  certain  native  bulbous  plants 
may  remain  viable  for  a  number  of  years,  one's 
chances  for  successful  germination  would  likely 
increase  by  using  freshly  harvested  seed.  If  it  is 
necessary  to  hold  seed  for  any  length  of  time,  it 
would  be  well  to  clean  and  dry  the  seed  first,  seal  it 
in  a  container,  which  can  then  be  stored  for  a  year 
or  longer  in  a  refrigerator.  Seeds  of  some  species 
may  require  cold-moist  stratification  for  periods  up 
to  three  months  before  germination  will  occur  (e.g., 
Lilium  humboldtii).  Most  other  species  will  germi 
nate  readily  within  a  few  days  or  weeks  after  planting 
in  the  fall. 


Soil  Mix  for  Seeds 

A  soil  mix  consisting  of  equal  parts  of  coarse  sand, 
coarse  redwood  sawdust,  and  leaf  mold  has  been 
successful  for  germinating  seeds  of  most  species 
discussed  in  this  article.  This  combination  will 
provide  a  friable  medium  that  crumbles  readily  in 
one's  hand,  while  providing  ample  humus  which  will 
supply  sufficient  nutrients  to  the  seedlings  following 
germination. 


148 


Very  sharp  drainage  from  the  soil  mix  is  of  para 
mount  importance,  and  the  soil  mix  described  has 
this  characteristic,  although  other  materials  and 
combinations  may  be  equally  suitable.  Even  sharper 
drainage  may  be  obtained  by  putting  a  layer  of 
coarse  sand  or  similar  material  in  the  bottom  of  a 
seed  flat  or  pot  prior  to  adding  the  soil  mix.  The 
seed  may  then  be  broadcast  over  the  surface  of  the 
soil  and  lightly  covered  with  the  same  mix.  A  general 
rule  to  follow  regarding  depth  of  sowing  would  be 
to  cover  the  seed  no  more  than  twice  the  diameter  of 
the  seed.  Unless  the  seed  is  very  coarse,  a  covering 
of  Vi-inch  of  soil  mix  would  be  more  than  sufficient. 
A  final  shallow  layer  of  very  coarse  sand  may  be 
added,  which  prevents  the  seed  from  being  washed 
out  of  the  soil  mix  by  breaking  up  the  falling  rain 
drops  and  allowing  water  just  to  trickle  through  the 
medium. 


Stratification 

With  the  pots  or  flats  placed  outside,  exposed  to 
the  elements,  natural  cold-moist  stratification  will 
occur  during  the  rainy  winter  months.  Protection 
from  gophers,  mice,  birds,  and  other  predators 
should  be  provided.  An  alternative  method  would  be 
to  accomplish  cold-moist  stratification  in  a  refrig 
erator.  Place  the  seeds  in  a  mix  of  equal  parts  of  sand 
and  shredded  peat  moss,  moistened  but  not  dripping 
wet.  Place  in  plastic  bags  or  in  small  covered  jars, 
in  the  vegetable  crisper  or  other  section  of  the 
refrigerator  where  the  temperature  is  between  35° 
and  42°  F.  The  see-through  plastic  bags  or  glass 
jars  permit  inspection  periodically.  If  germination 
occurs  remove  and  plant  at  once.  Most  seeds 
respond  to  stratification  of  thirty  to  sixty  days.  Some 
require  ninety  to  one  hundred  and  tWenty  days.  After 
the  prescribed  time,  the  seed  can  be  sown  as  pre 
viously  described.  (There  are  several  modifications 
of  this  technique,  using  layers  of  paper  towels  or 
muslin,  etc.  and  even  placing  some  kinds  of  seeds 
in  the  freezing  compartment.)  Unfortunately  specific 
information  on  the  germination  of  various  species 
is  incomplete  and  scattered. 


Post  Germination  Culture 

Following  germination,  the  cultural  conditions 
necessary  for  continued  growth  of  the  seedlings  may 
vary  according  to  the  species  and  the  nature  of  its 
original  habitat.  Some  seedlings  must  be  maintained 
continually  moist;  others  should  go  through  a 
seasonal  dry  period,  thus  duplicating  the  arid 
summer  months  in  the  wild.  However,  it  seems  that 


Checker-Lily  (Fritillaria  lanceolata) 

most  species  ofErythronium  prefer  to  be  kept  damp 
in  cultivation,  although  quite  the  opposite  condition 
prevails  in  the  wild.  Seedlings  should  be  watered 
regularly  to  keep  them  moist  in  the  summer,  with 
probably  one  watering  a  week  after  the  first  of 
August.  E.  tuolumnense  seedlings  will  perish  in 
cultivation  if  allowed  to  dry  out  completely,  although 
its  home  in  the  Sierra  Nevada  foothills  of  Tuolumne 
and  Stanislaus  Counties  is  absolutely  bone-dry  all 
summer  long. 

Seedlings  of  Allium,  Brodiaea,  Calochortus,  and 
Fritillaria  should  be  kept  moist  until  about  the  first 
of  July,  or  until  the  edges  of  the  tiny  leaves  start 
turning  yellow.  Watering  should  then  be  halted  and 
the  pots  turned  on  their  sides  to  make  sure  the 
seedlings  receive  a  complete  summer's  rest.  Bulb 


149 


size  may  be  more  than  doubled  in  one  growth  cycle 
by  keeping  them  moist  until  this  late  in  the  season. 
With  the  exception  of  the  slow-growing  Lilium 
humboldtii,  which  should  be  kept  only  slightly  moist, 
lilies  must  be  kept  damp  at  all  times.  Quite  often 
some  of  the  wet-growing  lilies  will  not  show  seedling 
leaves  above  ground  for  some  time;  nonetheless, 
bulbs  are  forming  under  the  soil  mix.  Even  if 
germination  is  not  observed,  it  may  be  better  to 
assume  it  has  occurred  and  maintain  a  high  moisture 
level  without  disturbing  the  soil.  Growth  of  lilies 
is  quite  often  upset  by  disturbing  them  the  first  year 


after  germination.  It  may  be  desirable  to  delay  trans 
planting  seedlings  until  after  three  years  of  growth; 
however,  to  avoid  overcrowding  at  this  stage,  the 
seed  should  initially  be  sown  rather  widely  spaced. 


Transplanting 

It  is  generally  preferable  to  allow  seedlings  of  all 
the  species  mentioned,  especially  those  of  Calo- 
chortus  and  Fritillaria,  to  remain  in  the  pot  for  two 
years  after  germination.  When  the  young  leaves 


Trillium  (Trillium  ovatum) 


8 


150 


have  died  down  the  second  year,  the  bulblets  can  be 
transferred  to  a  larger  container  at  a  wider  spacing 
to  encourage  more  rapid  growth.  Calochortus  and 
FritHlaria  often  die  if  the  seedlings  are  disturbed 
much  the  first  year. 

During  the  first  two  years  in  cultivation,  growth  of 
several  species  of  FritHlaria  (F.  agrestis,  biflora, 
liliacea,  pluriflora,  and  striata)  is  superior  in  a  light, 
loose  soil  mix,  compared  to  their  growth  in  the  stiff, 
heavy  clay  native  soils.  Later  on,  however,  these 
bulbs  can  be  transplanted  to  clay  soils.  Similarly 
species  of  Brodiaea  and  Calochortus,  which  usually 
grow  in  clay  soils  in  the  wild,  perform  far  better  in 
our  gardens  in  a  light,  porous  soil  mix,  with  little 
or  no  clay.  One  exception  to  this  generalization 
seems  to  be  FritHlaria  recurva;  seedlings  of  this 
species  persist  only  a  few  years  in  cultivation  regard 
less  of  the  soil  mixtures  or  cultural  techniques 
applied.  Perhaps  planting  seedlings  in  soils  obtained 
from  areas  where  the  species  grows  naturally  will 
lead  to  success. 

Dry  seeds  of  slink  pod  (Scoliopus  bigelovii)  germi 
nate  readily  in  the  fall,  but  little  is  known  about 
transplanting  this  species  in  cultivation.  This  coastal 
inhabitant  has  a  slender  rootstock  which  taps  under 
ground  moisture  from  damp  shady  spots. 


Time  to  Blooming 

The  time  before  a  seedling  will  reach  flowering 
age  may  be  considerable  and  one  should  be  prepared 
to  be  patient.  This  time  span  may  vary  from  one 
species  to  another;  for  instance,  trilliums  may  take 
ten  years  to  bloom  from  seed,  whereas  brodiaeas 
may  bloom  in  three  years,  and  alliums  in  two  or  three 
years.  Calochortus,  Erythronium,  and  FritHlaria 
generally  flower  in  the  fourth  season  from  seed,  as 
do  most  lilies;  however,  Lilium  pitkinense  often 
blooms  within  eighteen  to  thirty  months  after  germi 
nation.  In  any  case,  in  spite  of  the  long  delay,  when 
flowering  does  commence,  the  display  certainly 
justifies  the  wait. 


Garden  Culture 

The  most  important  factor  to  remember  in  growing 
roost  of  our  native  bulbous  plants  in  the  garden  is 
the  requirement  for  summer  drought  in  order  to 
produce  the  best  flowering.  These  plants  have 
evolved  under  natural  conditions  that  have  led  to 
the  development  of  specialized  underground  root 
structures  which  are  adapted  to  the  summer  baking 
they  receive  in  the  wild.  These  conditions  can  be 
m°re  or  less  duplicated  in  our  gardens  by  planting 


on  a  hot,  south-facing  slope.  Most  species  of  Allium, 
Brodiaea,  and  Calochortus  would  succeed  well 
planted  here,  as  well  as  those  fritillaries  which 
grow  in  clay  soils.  FritHlaria  lanceolata,  however, 
would  do  better  under  cooler  conditions. 

With  the  possible  exception  of  Calochortus,  most 
of  the  species  considered  will  adapt  to  almost  any 
garden  soils  without  additional  preparation.  Calo 
chortus  are  generally  much  superior  if  they  are 
grown  in  large  containers  in  a  very  light  loose  soil 
mixture.  Following  flowering,  the  plants  may 
become  untidy  as  the  bulbs  go  dormant.  Simply 
move  the  containers  out  of  sight,  and  withhold 
water  during  the  summer. 

Bulbs  of  Brodiaea,  Calochortus,  and  Allium  can 
be  stored  out  of  the  ground  for  several  months  prior 
to  planting  without  harm.  An  easy  storage  method 
would  be  to  bury  clean,  healthy  bulbs  in  dry  sand 
in  a  flat  or  box,  which  could  then  be  placed  in  the 
sun  without  irrigation.  Thus  exposed,  the  bulbs  will 
become  summer-cured.  A  screen  placed  over  the 
flat  will  offer  protection  from  hungry  birds  and 
mammals.  Calochortus  and  some  species  of  Allium 
seem  to  be  able  to  stay  dormant  until  one  gets  around 
to  planting  them,  but  most  of  these  bulbs  should  be 
planted  in  the  garden  as  soon  as  possible  in  October, 
not  later  than  the  first  part  of  November.  Brodiaeas 
will  start  to  grow  promptly  as  fall  approaches,  and 
these  bulbs  must  be  planted  by  October  or  November 
or  they  will  shrivel  up  and  die. 

In  the  garden  a  top  dressing  of  good  leaf  mold  with 
hoof  and  horn  meal  or  bone  meal  may  be  added  about 
the  first  of  October.  This  may  be  supplemented  with 
liquid  fertilizer,  particularly  on  potted  bulbs,  once 
the  leaves  appear  above  the  pot.  Monthly  applica 
tions  of  a  weak  solution  would  be  sufficient  to  obtain 
lush,  even  growth.  If  directions  for  a  liquid  type 
of  fertilizer  call  for  two  tablespoons  per  gallon  of 
water  for  example,  it  would  be  desirable  to  reduce 
the  concentration  to  one  tablespoon  per  gallon  of 
water.  It  may  be  possible  to  use  the  newer  slow- 
release  type  of  dry  fertilizers  in  place  of  monthly 
applications  of  a  liquid  fertilizer. 

If  the  annual  rains  do  not  commence  by  mid 
October  in  California,  pots  or  beds  of  bulbs  should 
be  thoroughly  soaked  and  kept  moist  until  the  onset 
of  the  rainy  season.  Additional  irrigation  may  be 
necessary  if  prolonged  dry  periods  occur  during  the 
winter.  The  blooms  of  Trillium,  Scoliopus,  Dis- 
porum,  Smilacina,  andClintonia  are  much  improved 
if  the  plants  receive  ample  supplemental  watering 
during  the  summertime. 

Insect  pests,  other  than  aphids,  are  not  generally 
a  problem  on  these  plants  in  the  garden.  When 
encountered,  they  can  simply  be  washed  off  with 
water  or  controlled  with  a  light  dusting  or  spray  of 


151 


Iris  macrosiphon 

an  appropriate  insecticide.  Often  in  gardens  a  fungus 
will  damage  the  foliage  of  Fritillaria,  Allium,  and 
Lilium,  while  species  of  Brodiaea  and  Calochortus 
are  rarely  attacked.  Control  can  be  accomplished 
by  treatment  of  the  foliage  with  a  suitable  fungicide, 
with  additional  fungicide  applied  to  the  soil  and 
soaked  down  into  the  container  or  bed.  Most  of  the 
troublesome  fungi  are  soil-borne,  and  it  is  easier 
to  control  them  at  their  source. 

This  precaution  cannot  be  stated  strongly  enough: 
The  manufacturer's  directions  for  the  safe  use  of 
any  pesticide  should  be  strictly  followed. 


Uncommon  Garden  Genera 

Several  species  and  genera  which  also  have  quite 
showy  flowers  have  not  yet  been  considered  in  this 
discussion.  Although  they  are  not  commonly  planted 
in  the  garden,  the  results  obtained  may  be  quite 
worth  the  extra  effort  required. 

Clintonia  species,  for  some  unknown  reason,  are 
very  difficult  to  transplant  into  areas  where  they 
are  not  normally  found.  Similarly,  the  sand  lily, 
Leucocrinum  montanum,  is  not  happy  when  brought 
down  into  low,  damp  areas,  usually  fading  out 
after  two  or  three  years  in  the  garden.  Xero- 
phyllum  tenax  (bear  grass)  will  transplant  if  the  deep, 
long,  fine  roots  are  retained  undamaged  in  digging 
the  clumps  of  this  grass-like  plant.  At  lower  eleva 
tions,  where  winters  are  less  severe,  the  clumps  of 
bear  grass  must  be  burned  in  order  to  initiate  flower 
ing.  If  burning  is  accomplished  carefully  in  the  fall, 
flowers  will  usually  appear  the  following  year.  The 
plants  should  be  allowed  a  rest  period  for  a  year  or 
more  before  the  process  is  repeated. 

A  challenge  to  gardeners  is  presented  by  the  mag 
nificent  desert  lily,  Hesperocallis  undulata.  The 
only  recorded  instance  of  this  beautiful  desert  plant 
blooming  in  cultivation  was  in  the  1880s.  Duplica 
tion  of  its  native  habitat  under  garden  conditions 
is  difficult;  flowering  fails  to  occur  under  mild 
weather  conditions  where  there  is  too  much  moisture 
in  the  winter. 

Veratrum  species  are  very  difficult  to  transplant 
and  some  of  them  are  quite  spectacular  in  flower 
The  corn-lily,  V.  californicum,  of  the  Sierra  Nevada? 
has  been  transplanted  successfully.  The  show> 
north  coast  species,  V.fimbriatum,  is  less  amenable 
to  moving,  and  perhaps  should  be  enjoyed  only  in  its 
native  habitats.  In  one  trial,  only  six  out  of  200  seed 
lings  survived  transplanting. 

Although  they  have  quite  showy  flowers,  it  migh 
be  best  to  forego  species  of  Zigadenus  if  smal 
children  are  in  the  garden.  Some  species  may  b< 
poisonous  if  the  leaves  or  other  parts  are  ingested' 
Cattle  and  sheep-poisoning  cases  have  been  docu 
mented. 

The  bulbs  of  some  species  of  soap  plant,  Chloro 
galum,  have  found  use  as  a  soap,  food,  and  fisl 
narcotic  by  early  Indians.  The  flowers  are  generall; 
small,  nocturnal  and,  with  two  exceptions,  no 
exceptionally  showy.  Two  quite  rare  but  show 
species  should  only  be  admired  and  enjoyed  in  thei 
native  habitats.  C.  parviflorum  occurs  in  Riversid 
and  San  Diego  Counties,  while  C.  purpureum  grow 
in  Jolon  Valley,  Monterey  County.  Both  are  ver 
difficult  to  establish  in  gardens. 

Camassias  are  comparatively  easy  to  grow,  an 
they  can  occasionally  be  found  for  sale  in  nurserie 


10 


152 


Fawn-Lily 
(Erythronium  califomicum) 


in  the  fall.  Camassia  species  grow  naturally  under 
wet  conditions,  and  they  make  good  garden  plants, 
provided  they  are  put  near  a  lawn  or  where  summer 
watering  is  adequate.  Their  flowers  are  quite  distinct 
and  showy.  The  main^onsideration  is  that  they  must 
grow  where  there  is  a  lot  of  moisture.  Camassia 
bulbs  should  not  be  allowed  to  dry  out,  and  should 
be  planted  soon  after  purchasing  or  obtaining  them. 
Maianthemum  dilcttatum  (false  lily-of-the-valley) 
makes  a  delightful  foliage  plant  for  the  shady  garden. 
It  is  a  fine,  delicate  groundcover  which  must  be  kept 
watered  at  all  times  or  it  will  perish.  The  flowers 


are  anything  but  showy.  It  is  found  from  about  San 
Francisco  north,  becoming  a  very  common  plant 
further  north  in  the  damp  areas  of  the  redwood 
forests. 

Still  less  common  garden  subjects  for  various 
reasons  are  the  following  genera:  Narthecium 
(bog-asphodel),  Tofieldia,  Smilax,  Streptopus 
(twisted  stalk),  Stenanthium,  Odontostomum,  and 
Schoenolirion.  Schoenolirion  species  are  easy  to 
transplant,  but  not  very  showy.  Odontostomum  is 
so  rare  and  grows  in  clay  soil,  which  is  extremely 
difficult  to  penetrate  when  dry,  perhaps  it  should 


11 


153 


be  enjoyed  only  in  the  wild.  Similarly,  Stenanthium, 
although  a  delightful  little  plant,  is  very  rare,  and 
duplicating  its  natural  environment  in  a  garden 
would  be  difficult. 

Streptopus  in  California  is  rather  rare  and  some 
what  similar  to  Disporum  (fairy  bells),  although  the 
latter  is  very  plentiful  and  has  showy  flowers.  Smilax 
would  be  quite  at  home  in  most  gardens,  except  that 
objections  might  be  raised  to  the  spines  occurring 
along  the  stems,  the  long  deciduous  period,  and  the 
size  of  the  plant,  often  twining  twenty  to  twenty-five 
feet  into  nearby  trees.  It  transplants  with  difficulty, 
and  deer  readily  browse  it  right  down  to  ground 
level.  Narthecium  and  Tofieldia  may  persist  for  only 
a  short  time  in  the  garden,  even  when  transplanted 


Slink- Pod  (Scoliopus  bigelovii) 


into  black   muck-like  soil  transported  from  their 
native  high-elevation  habitats. 

For  most  of  these  bulbous  native  plants,  with  the 
exceptions  noted,  we  encourage  your  garden  experi 
mentation  and  enjoyment.  Particularly  do  we 
encourage  conservation  attempts  through  propaga 
tion  by  seed  and  transplanting  of  those  native  plants, 
especially  rare  ones,  which  may  be  threatened  by 
imminent  road  building,  construction,  or  develop 
ment.  It  can  be  hoped  that  some  plants  may  thus  be 
preserved  from  the  path  of  onrushing  bulldozers 
for  future  generations  of  Californians  to  study  and 
appreciate,  even  if  just  in  our  gardens. 

MISS  BUCK'S  DRAWINGS 

by  Gladys  L  Smith 

The  illustrations  accompaning  the  article,  "Propa 
gation  of  Bulbous  Native  Plants,"  in  this  issue  are 
the  work  of  Margaret  Warriner  Buck.  They  are  a 
small  selection  from  a  total  of  150  illustrations 
prepared  by  Miss  Buck  for  one  of  the  most  popular 
books  ever  written  about  California  native  plants, 
The  Wild  Flowers  of  California,  by  Mary  Elizabeth 
Parsons,  first  published  in  1897. 

Little  is  known  about  Miss  Buck's  life  today.  Her 
family  home  was  apparently  in  San  Rafael.  She  and 
Elizabeth  Parsons  shared  an  interest  in  drawing  and 
painting  and  for  a  time  were  members  together  in  an 
art  class  given  in  San  Rafael  by  a  Mr.  Latimer.  As 
the  wildflower  book  took  shape  in  the  1890s,  it  was 
only  natural  for  the  author  to  turn  to  her  talented 
companion  of  the  Latimer  class  for  assistance  with 
the  illustrations. 

Elizabeth  Parsons  offered  altogether  six  printings 
of  her  book  from  the  first  edition  in  1897  to  the  last 
in  1930.  Then  a  few  years  after  Miss  Parsons'  death. 
a  seventh  edition  was  brought  out  in  1955  by  the 
California  Academy  of  Sciences.  This  was  made 
possible  largely  through  the  cooperation  and  permis 
sion  of  Mrs.  Thomas  T.  Kent  of  Marin  County  who 
is  today  the  legal  owner  of  all  materials  left  by  Miss 
Parsons,  who  was  a  cousin  of  Thomas  T.  Kent.  This 
material  includes  the  original  pen  and  ink  plate* 
prepared  by  Margaret  Buck. 

The  plates  were  originally  designed  for  coloring 
It  will  never  be  known  how  many  owners  of  The 
Wild  Flowers  of  California,  as  they  identified  their 
plants,   filled  in  with  crayon  or  watercolors  t 
beautiful  and  accurate  black  and  white  illustrations 
drawn  so  long  ago  by  Margaret  Warriner  Buck. 
she  is  remembered  for  nothing  more  than  t 
drawings,  it  is  enough. 


12 


154 


Appendix  B 


This  partial  text  of  the  Spring  1989  issue 
of  the  Society  for  Pacific  Coast  Native 
Iris  Almanac  describes  Wayne  Roderick  as 
teacher,  and  guide  to  the  great  out  of 
doors . 


THE  1989  SPCNI  SPRING  EXPEDITION 


Forty  three  intrepid  and  dedicated 
irisarians  braved  the  ominous  threat  of 
stormy  weather  and  the  uncertainties  of 
a  harrowing  bus  ride  over  tortuous  log-* 
ging  roads  of  the  southwest  Oregon  moun 
tains,  just  for  the  pleasure  of  seeing 
their  favorite  iris  species  growing  and 
blooming  in  the  wild.  Actually,  the 
weather  was  ideal,  the  bus  was  comfort 
ably  equipped  with  modern  conveniences, 
its  driver  congenial  and  cooperative, 
and  everyone  had  a  memorable  experience. 

So  it  is  that  the  first  (annual?) 
SPCNI-sponsored  trip  to  view  native  iris 
has  become  history.  Historically,  this 
was  by  no  means  the  first  PCN  trek, 
people  having  explored  hillsides  and  gar 
dens  singly  and  in  groups  looking  for 
native  iris  ever  since  the  times  of  the 
earliest  botanical 'collectors.  Modern 
day  treks  date  back  to  the  late  1950s, 
some  15  years  before  the  establishment 
of  SPCNI,  when  a  dozen  or  so  irisarians 
from  Washington  and  Oregon  got  together 
each  year  for  4  different  years  to  ex 
plore  Oregon  and  Northern  California 
iris  stands.   In  April,  1977,  4  years 
after  the  SPCNI  was  founded,  members 
from  Southern  California  organized  a 
trek  to  visit  the  gardens  of  George 
Stambach  and  the  McCaskills  in  Pasadena. 
Last  year  a  group  of  SPCNI  members  and 
others  from  the  Santa  Rosa  area  organ 
ized  a  visit  to  iris  stands  around  their 
area  and  westward  to  the  coast.  They 
reported  having  such  a  good  time  that 
others,  perhaps  out  of  sheer  jealousy, 
wanted  to  do  it,  too.   It  was  from  this 
beginning  that  our  SPCNI-sponsored  tour 
became  first  a  goal  and  eventually, 
largely  through  the  efforts  of  Adele 


Lawyer  and  the  help  and  advice  of 
friends  both  in  and  out  of  SPCNI,  a 
reality. 

As  planned,  the  group  gathered  at  a 
motel  in  Roseburg,  Oregon  on  the  even 
ing  of  Friday,  May  12,  arriving  by  air 
and  surface  travel  as  suited  their  cir 
cumstances.  After  dinner,  everyone  met 
in  the  motel  conference  room  for  intro 
ductions,  a  briefing,  and  a  slide  pres 
entation  showing  pictures  of  the  species 
and  means  of  identification.   Introduc 
tions  revealed  participants  from  Oregon, 
northern  and  southern  California,  and, 
notably,  Dora  Sparrow,  who  had  come  all 
the  way  from  New  Zealand  just  for  this 
trip. 

The  bus  left  the  motel  promptly  at 
8:30  am  Saturday  and  made  the  first  stop 
a  half  hour  later  on  a  little  lane  off 
Highway  42,  which  leads  from  near  Rose- 
burg  to  the  coast.   There  we  had  our 
first  view  of  I.  chrysophylla  and  I. 
tenax,  growing  among  ferns  and  ever 
greens.  Here,  also,  Wayne  Roderick 
started  what  was  to  become  a  major  fea 
ture  of  the  trip;  for  while  everyone 
else  was  looking  at  iris,  Wayne  was 
gathering  samples  of  the  surrounding 
plants  to  identify  for  us  as  we  pro 
ceeded  in  the  bus  toward  our  next  stop. 
Wayne  is  well  suited  for  this  role, 
having  managed  both  the  University  of 
California  and  the  Regional  Parks  Bo 
tanic  Gardens,  and  collected  extensively 
not  only  in  the  region  through  which  we 
were  traveling,  but  also  world-wide  for 
both  gardens.   He  is  an  authority  on 
Indian  uses  of  the  native  plants  and 
was  able  to  share  some  of  his  knowledge 
with  us. 


155 


Our  next  stops  were  along  a.  logging 
road  a  mile  south  of  China  Flat  between 
Powers  and  Agness.   Here  we  saw  I.  in- 
nominata  in  all  shades  of  bright  orange 
to  yellow  and  in  many  configurations  of 
petal  shapes  and  markings.   It  was  easy 
to  see  why  I.innominata  has  been  such  an 
imortant  genetic  source  by  hybridizers 
of  our  modern  cultivated  clones.   Here, 
too,  we  experienced  our  first  confront 
ation  with  what  was  to  become  the  most 
difficult  part  of  the  trip:  tearing 
peopl*  away  from  the  flowers  and  getting 
them  back  on  the  bus. 

At  the  summit  of  the  Powers-Agness 
road  where  we  stopped  for  lunch,  we 
found  more  J.  innominata ,  but  this  time 
in  pale  yellow  to  cream  colors. 


Pale  yellow  form  of  J. innominata 
seen  near  our  lunch  stop 

Three  more  stops  were  made  on  our  way 
down  to  the  coast.   As  we  came  closer  to 
the  coast  J.  innominata  merged  into  J. 
douglasiana  colonies,  and  on  the  final 
stop  in  a  large  area  which  was  being  re 
forested,  we  found  clumps  of  pure  J. 
douglasiana. 

Saturday  night  was  spent  in  a  motel 
at  Brookings,  Oregon,  where  Gigi  Hall 
made  attractive  and  colorful  name  tags 
for  everyone. 

In  the  morning,  we  made  a  short  stop 
at  Azalea  State  Park  to  see  fragrant 


native  azaleas,  some  of  which  were  said 
to  be  over  300  years  old.  That  and  a 
second  brief  stop  at  a  Redwood  State 
Park  along  Highway  197  in  California, 
were  the  only  non-iris  stops  of  the  trip 
The  first  iris  stop  of  the  day  was  to 
have  been  on  a  road  off  Highway  199  at 
Gasquet,  California;  but  before  we  got 
there  someone  on  the  bus  yelled, "Irises I1 
The  bus  driver  found  a  wide  spot  on  the 
highway  and  everyone  poured  off  the  bus 
to  brave  the  very  real  danger  of  60-mile 
an-hour  traffic  on  a  major  state  highway 
with  only  4  or  5  feet  of  flat  space  be 
tween  the  pavement  and  the  bank  on 
which  the  iris  were  growing. 


The  highway  department  left  little 
room  along  state  route  199  for 
Wayne  Roderick  to  tell  us  about 
the  plant  he  is  holding 

Fortunately  no  one  was  killed,  and 
when  we  did  arrive  at  Gasquet,  we  turned 
left  Off  Highway  199  on  a  road  which  cir 
cled  in  back  of  town.   About  a  mile  from 
the  highway  the  bus  driver  found  a  good 
place  to  stop.   Here  we  found  irises  sim 
ilar  in  color  and  configuration  to  those 
seen  earlier  along  the  highway,  that  is  a 
pale  cream-yellow  background  marked  and 
washed  with  purple.   These  correspond  to 
the  interspecific  crosses  between  I.  in 
nominata  and  J.  douglasiana  known  to 
occur  in  the  area  and  formerly  called  J. 
thompsonii. 


156 


Swallowtail  butterfly  contemplating 

the  pollination  of  I.thompsonii 

during  our  stop  at  Gasquet 


From  there  we  cruised  back  into  Or 
egon,  turning  left  on  a  logging  road 
out  of  the  little  town  of  O'Brien.   This 
road,  the  second  scheduled  stop  of  the 
day  had  been  recommended  by  Jon  Splane, 
a  SPCNI  member  from  Eugene,  Oregon; 
however,  Wayne  Roderick  also  knew  of 
the  road,  having  previously  collected 
there.   This  was  fortunate  because 


Wayne  knew  of  a  wide  place  on  the  grav 
el  road  about  5  or  6  miles  from  the 
highway  where  the  50-foot  bus  would  be 
able  to  turn  around.  This  "wide  place" 
also  proved  to  be  a  delightful  spot 
where  the  logging  road  crossed  over 
Whiskey  Creek,  and  we  quickly  chose  it 
as  the  ideal  place  for  lunch. 


Wayne  conducting  a  "Botany  1A  Class" 
in  the  wide  place  on  the  road  near  Whiskey 
Creek.  Whiskey  Creek  bridge  is  in  the  background 


157 


Here  we  found  our  first  Varlingtonia 
calif arnica,  (pitcher  plant  or  cobra 
lily) ,  in  a  little  bog  area  a  few  feet 
from  where  the  bus  had  stopped.  There 
must  have  been  a  hundred  or  more  of 
these  odd  cobra-shaped,  insect  eating 
plants  and  everyone  went  wild  snapping 
cameras  and  crowding  to  get  a  better 
look.   Of  course,  we  later  found  them 
by  the  thousands  in  swampy  seepage 
slopes,  not  more  than  a  hundred  yards 
or  so  down  the  road,  but  that  first 
sight  was  a  real  thrill. 


QkttfT*  mi 


>,ji 


*•  s**m*  it  dP*\T^P  ^ 

>^mt  ••**"**''* 

/*»•.  »^:Vjg/ifcL»  ««* 


Mass  of  Darlingtonia  calif ornica 


Cream-yellow  flowers  of  Iris 
bracteata  rising  above  a  clump 
of  brilliant  pink  phlox 


We  took  our  lunches  where  our  fancy 
dictated:  to  the  edge  of  the  rushing 
stream  or  into  the  woods,  and  everyone 
felt  the  magic  of  the  surroundings. 
Some  nice  plants  of  Dicentra  oregonum 
were  much  photographed  and  Wayne  iden 
tified  surrounding  plants  and  trees  at 
a  roadside  gathering. 

From  there  we  traveled  back  down  the 
road  for  a  couple  of  miles,  either  on 


10 


Lacy,  white  Iris  chrysophylla  on  Cow  Creek  Loop 


Appendix    c>      15s 


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INDEX- -Wayne  Roderick 


164 


American  Rock  Garden  Society,  Le 

Piniec  Award,  132 
Anderson,  E.  B. ,  120-121 
Albush,  Christifer,  2 

Baker,  Milo,  21 

Baker,  Herbert  G. ,  43,  51-52,  64, 

68,  119 
Bancroft,  Ruth  (Bancroft  Dry  Garden, 

Walnut  Creek,  CA)  17,  37,  139 
Bass,  Tom,  135 

Beard,  Helen-Mar,  41-42,  44,  118 
Berkeley  Horticultural  Nursery, 

Berkeley,  CA,  27 
Berry  Botanic  Garden,  Portland  OR, 

38 

Bhrubaker,  Alan,  135 
Blake,  Anita,  35,  70 
Bios,  May,  69,  105 
Bonickson,  John,  78 
Bowe  rman ,  Mary ,  116 
Brandegee,  Katherine  and  Townsend, 

99 

Brewer,  Leo,  77,  79 
Brickell,  Chris,  122-123 
Bureau  of  Land  Management,  89 
Burr,  Joyce,  79 

California  Floral  Nursery,  Fulton, 

CA,  60 
California  Horticultural  Journal. 

118-119 
California  Horticultural  Society, 

meetings,  34-35;  Rixford  Award, 

132 
California  native  plants,  gardening 

with,  14-15;  See  California 

Native  Plants  Society. 
California  Native  Plant  Society,  29, 

63,  77ff-99,  111;  Inventory  of 

California  Natural  Areas.  87; 

Inventory  of  the  Rare  and 

Endangered  Plants  of  California. 


81,  83-86,  111;  study  group 

[Cultivars  of  California 

Natives],  113-118 

California  State  Park  Commission,  78 
Caro,  Piro,  118-119 
Chaney,  Ralph,  49-50 
chemical  fertilizers,  140 
Christ,  Anton,  44,  52,  66,  69,  71 
Church,  Thomas  D. ,  32-34 
Clark,  W.  B. ,  Nursery,  San  Jose,  26, 

27 

composting,  139-140 
Crampton,  Beecher,  137 

dawn  redwood,  49-50,  69 

Day,  Rosamond,  137 

Day,  Bill,  136 

Dempsey,  Jack,  2 

Domoto,  Toichi,  9,  27-28 

Donovan,  Lavelle  Marie,  3 

Donnell,  Dewey,  garden,  Sonoma,  32 

Doty,  Ken,  27 

drought -tolerant  plants,  60,  91 

Dry den,  Kath,  124-125 

Eastwood,  Alice,  98,  118 
Edmonds,  Louis,  Nursery,  Danville 

CA,  91,  97 

Edwards,  Steve,  109,  112 
Eisen,  Gustaf,  99 
Emery,  Dara,  111 
Everett,  Percy,  111,  119 

Field  Guide  to  Pacific  States 

Wildf lowers.  114-115 
Flack,  Betsy,  135 
Fleming,  Jenny  and  Scott,  79,  133 
floras  [for  California],  47,  112, 

115-117,  133-138 
Friends  of  the  Regional  Parks 

Botanic  Garden,  77-79 
Fruge,  August  and  Susan,  79 


165 


Gallegos,  Leo,  136 
Gankin,  Roman,  111,  133,  136 
Garden  Conservancy,  37 
Gilkey,  Howard,  13-14 
Goodspeed,  Thomas,  69 
Greene,  Edward  L. ,  57-58,  98 

Hall,  Tony,  125 

Halliwell,  Brian,  125 

Halprin,  Lawrence,  33 

Hardy  Californlans .  117 

Hawkins,  Lester,  59-60,  133,  136 

Hayakawa,  Margedant,  120 

Haymaker,  Linda,  133 

Hickey,  Jim,  136 

Hickman,  Jim,  115 

Hildreth,  Dick,  135 

Hood,  Leslie,  87 

Howell,  John  Thomas,  118 

Huntington  Gardens,  Pasadena,  CA, 

120 
Hutchinson,  Paul  C.,  44,  65,  66 

Japanese  nurseries,  East  Bay,  7,  9- 

11 

Jepson,  Willis  Linn,  47,  112,  115 
Jones,  Marcus,  70,  98 

Karok  Indian  tribe,  Klamath  River, 

CA,  63-64 

Kessell,  Harlan,  137 
Kimnach,  Myron,  120 
Kipping,  Ted,  106-107 
Kipping,  John,  106,  136 

Laetsch,  Watson,  43,  79-81,  119 
landscape  architects,  32-34 
Lutsko,  Ron,  15,  33-34,  131 

Manual  of  the  Flowering  Plants  of 
California.  See  Jepson. 

Matthews,  Brian,  128 

McClintock,  Elizabeth,  118,  135-136 

McLellan,  Rod,  Nursery,  36 

McNear,  George  P.,  12 

Menzies,  Art,  58-59,  70,  93,  111, 
113 

Menzies,  Barbara,  58 

Menzies,  Rob,  58 

Moore,  Alice,  122 


Mott,  William  Penn,  77- 
Munz,  Philip  A. ,  115,  133 

Nature  Conservancy,  86-87 
Niehaus,  Theodore  F. ,  114 
nursery  business,  21ff-34;  East  Bay, 

7,  9;  California  native  plants, 

91 

Oakland  Spring  Garden  Show,  13-14 
Olbrich,  Marshall,  59-60,  136 
Orchid  Society,  35-36 
Ornduff,  Robert,  47,  75,  80,  96,  98, 
118-119 

Page,  Nancy,  135 

Payne,  Theodore,  96-97 

Pearce,  Owen,  119 

Petaluma,  CA,  lff-12,  15,  24-27,  39; 
chicken  ranching,  3-6;  families, 
12;  Russian  Jews  in,  3-4 

Petaluma  Garden  Club,  16 

Plant,  Jonathan,  33 

Port  Orford  cedar,  94-95 

Purdy,  Carl,  96-97 

pygmy  forests,  55-57 

Raiche,  Roger,  91,  95 

Rancho  Santa  Ana  Botanic  Garden,  65, 
92,  119,  136 

Reagan,  Ronald,  and  UC,  42-43 

Reinelt,  Frank,  30-31 

Reiter,  Victor,  25-28,  34-35,  92 

Roberts,  Harry,  43 

Roderick,  Frank  S.,  2ffl8 

Roderick,  Joseph,  1-2 

Roderick,  Martha  C.,  3ff-18,  59-60, 
141 

Roderick,  Wayne,  collecting  trips, 
61-62,  84ff-92;  education,  20- 
23,  40-41,  47-48;  hired  by  UC, 
39-40;  hybridizing,  early 
attempts,  16;  orchid  growing,  12- 
13,  35-36;  philosophy,  66; 
propagating  bulbs,  50,  120ff-132; 
weeding,  44-45;  World  War  II,  19- 
20 

Roof,  Jim,  54-55,  77,  79,  84,  90, 
95,  100-113 


166 


Rowe ,  Denys ,  110 

Rowntree,  Lester,  41,  96-98,  117 
Royal  Horticultural  Society,  121- 
123 

Santa  Barbara  Botanic  Garden,  65, 

119 

Sawyer,  John,  94 
Schettler,  Suzanne,  80,  135 
Seneres,  Al ,  107-108 
Sharsmith,  Helen,  116 
Sigg,  Jake,  136 

Sissinghurst ,  garden  [England],  126 
Skinner,  Judith,  136 
Smaus ,  Robert,  136 

Smith,  [Mike]  Nevin,  28-29,  136,  140 
Spiller,  Caroline,  137 
Stanley  Smith  Horticultural  Trust, 

138 

Stebbins,  Ledyard,  54,  79-83,  93 
Strybing  Arboretum,  San  Francisco, 

CA,  58,  69,  114 
Sunset  Magazine.  12,  14,  136 
Sunset  Western  Garden  Book.  31-32 

Takahashi,  David,  137 

Thompson  and  Morgan  Seed  Co.,  123- 

124 

Thorne,  Robert,  111 
Tilden  Botanic  Garden  [East  Bay 

Regional  Parks  Botanic  Garden] , 

65,  100-113;  records,  104-105; 

volunteers,  104 

United  States  Forest  Service,  89,  93 
University  of  California,  Berkeley, 
Botanical  Garden,  39-76;  flood, 
1964,  71-72;  California  native 
area,  50ff-64;  classes,  40-41; 
collecting  class  material,  42- 
43,  46-47;  decent  program,  75- 
76;  freeze,  1972,  72-73,  78; 
Indian  Uses,  62-64;  Mather  Grove, 
73-74;  minority  workers  in  the 
1960s,  66-68;  pgymy  forest,  55- 
57;  Plant  Explorers  of  the  West, 
36-37,  62-63,  70;  soil,  51-52, 
54-55;  vernal  pool,  53,  55 
University  of  California,  Berkeley, 
Department  of  Botany,  40-43,  46- 


47,  57,  64-65 
University  of  California,  Davis,  42 

43 
University  of  California,  Hastings 

Preserve,  81,  97-98 

Van  Rensselaer,  Maunsell,  110 
Verity,  Mr.  [at  UCLA],  92 
vernal  pool  plants,  53,  55,  87-89 
Vetterle  and  Reinelt's,  Nursery,  29 

31 
Von  Graf en  Nursery,  Santa  Rosa,  27, 

28 

Walska,  Madame  Ganna  (Lotus land, 

Santa  Barbara) ,  35 
Waters,  George,  125-126 
Wertheim,  Ernest,  33,  135 
West,  James,  70 
Western  Hills  Nursery,  Occidental, 

CA,  59-60 
Williams,  Margaret  and  Lor ing,  93- 

94,  120-121 
Wintergreen  Nursery,  Watsonville, 

CA,  28-29,  140 
Wolf,  Myrtle,  95 
Wollers,  Mary,  81 


Suzanne  Bassett  Riess 

Grew  up  in  Bucks  County,  Pennsylvania.   Graduated  from 
Goucher  College,  B.A.  in  English,  1957. 
Post-graduate  work,  University  of  London  and  the 
University  of  California,  Berkeley,  in  English  and 
history  of  art. 

Feature  writing  and  assistant  woman's  page  editor, 
Globe-Times.  Bethlehem,  Pennsylvania. 
Volunteer  work  on  starting  a  new  Berkeley  newspaper. 
Natural  science  decent  at  the  Oakland  Museum. 
Free-lance  Photographer. 

Editor  in  the  Regional  Oral  History  Office  since  1960, 
interviewing  in  the  fields  of  art,  environmental 
design,  social  and  cultural  history,  horticulture, 
journalism,  photography,  Berkeley  and  University 
history. 


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